A US federal court has formally dismissed American billionaire Elon Musk's massive lawsuit against the startup OpenAI. The court concluded that the creators of the popular chatbot ChatGPT bear no legal liability to their former co-founder for a hypothetical abandonment of its original altruistic goals. This verdict brings to an end a protracted dispute that has captured the attention of the global tech community in recent months.

For OpenAI's management, this ruling is of enormous strategic importance, as it significantly simplifies the company's preparations for a potential public offering. With key legal risks mitigated, the anticipated initial public offering (IPO) could lock in the AI ​​developer's market capitalization at an astronomical $1 trillion. Remarkably, it took only about two hours of closed-door deliberations for a California jury to render a unanimous verdict that the statute of limitations for Musk's claims had simply expired.

In his lawsuit, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO insisted that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman deliberately misled him at the project's inception. According to the businessman, he was persuaded to invest $38 million in the startup with the promise of developing safe technologies for the benefit of all humanity, but then, without his consent, they linked the nonprofit organization to the commercial sector. This allowed OpenAI to attract tens of billions of dollars in institutional investment from Microsoft and other major financial market players. Despite the crushing defeat at first instance, Elon Musk has already publicly stated his firm stance and his intention to appeal the current verdict in a higher court.