Musk Loses OpenAI Lawsuit But Legal Experts Say He Won’t Stop Fighting
BBC Business reported Monday that Elon Musk has lost his high-profile Musk OpenAI lawsuit against the AI company and its co-founder Sam Altman, adding to a growing list of courtroom defeats for the world’s wealthiest person.
A Pattern of Legal Setbacks
Monday’s verdict is far from an isolated incident. Musk settled late last year with former Twitter executives and thousands of ex-employees. He had fought for years to avoid paying them anything. In March, investors who alleged he misled them during his Twitter takeover won their case against him. That same month, a judge dismissed his lawsuit against advertisers who had abandoned the platform. A separate ruling also overturned certain actions taken by DOGE, the cost-cutting initiative Musk helped establish, describing some grant cuts as unconstitutional.
Despite the mounting defeats, legal scholars say the pattern is unlikely to alter his behaviour.
What Experts Say About Musk’s Courtroom Approach
Shubha Ghosh, a law professor at Syracuse University, told BBC Business that Musk behaves in many respects like any entrepreneur asserting legal rights. Ghosh stopped short of calling his litigation strategy abusive, though he questioned its effectiveness.
Dorothy Lund, a professor at Columbia Law School, was more direct. She noted that no consequences imposed so far have been serious enough to change his behaviour. A $1.5 million SEC fine for failing to disclose his early accumulation of Twitter shares is barely a rounding error for someone of his wealth. When a Delaware judge invalidated his multibillion-dollar Tesla pay package in late 2024, Musk simply moved the company to Texas and secured shareholder approval for an even larger compensation deal.
Background: The OpenAI Dispute
Musk was an early backer of OpenAI, which was founded as a nonprofit. He later departed from its board and sued Altman, alleging the organisation had abandoned its founding principles by pursuing a for-profit structure. The jury found that Musk had waited too long to bring his claims. After the verdict, Musk attacked the presiding judge on his own social platform and pledged to appeal.
The Trillionaire Factor
Lund pointed out that Musk occupies almost unique territory among business leaders. His anticipated stake in a potential SpaceX public listing could make him the world’s first trillionaire. That financial firepower makes the cost of litigation essentially irrelevant. Unlike most executives, he also showed no interest in maintaining a quiet period ahead of the expected SpaceX listing, conducting an unusually public trial simultaneously. “He is not afraid of public opinion,” Lund told BBC Business. That appetite for risk, she said, is common among transformative entrepreneurs but rare in courtrooms.
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