A California jury has tossed out Elon Musk's high-profile lawsuit against OpenAI and its boss Sam Altman.
In a unanimous verdict, the jury agreed that Musk had waited too long to file his lawsuit, leaving all of his claims essentially expired.
Musk had accused Altman of breaching a non-profit contract by shifting the ChatGPT-maker to a for-profit company after Musk donated $38m (£28.5m) early in OpenAI's history.
Musk claimed Altman had deceived him by accepting his money and then reneging on OpenAI's original non-profit mission to develop artificial intelligence (AI) technology for the benefit of humanity.
Jurors spent just about two hours on Monday deliberating on the case, but they had spent three weeks viewing internal correspondence and hearing testimony from Musk, Altman and other tech industry executives, such as Microsoft's chief executive Satya Nadella.
Musk had accused Microsoft of aiding and abetting OpenAI in its allegedly improper transition to a more for-profit company.
Musk's other claims against Microsoft were dismissed as a matter of law given the jury's findings on the two claims against OpenAI.
Outside court, Marc Toberoff, a lawyer for Musk, said: This war is not over, and I'd sum it up in one word: appeal. Such a move would mean that a complete resolution of the case could end up being dragged out for a while, according to Carl Tobias, a law professor.
The bottom line is that an appeals court would be very unlikely to overturn such a fact-specific decision from a jury and a judge who agreed with it, Tobias added.
As the jury found that the statute of limitations had lapsed for Musk's claims, they were not required to consider the merits of his claims.
Musk may be unlikely to win there, too. However, he has vowed to continue the fight against OpenAI and Sam Altman.
