Author｜Hua Lin Dance King

Editor｜Jing Yu

In the classic gangster movie "The Godfather," there is a line that has survived to this day—"This is not personal, it's business."

But reality is often more complex. When business and personal grudges intertwine, and when a person is both a former co-founder and today's strongest competitor, it's hard to clarify whether the lawsuit is a legal document or a belated severance letter.

Currently, the most watched legal battle in Silicon Valley and indeed across the United States is undoubtedly the ongoing courtroom showdown between Musk and Altman.

Now, the long-standing "feud" has finally reached its first stage of outcome.

On May 18, 2026, local time, the federal court in San Francisco, nine jurors took less than two hours to deliver the verdict—Musk lost.

01 Six Years of Feud Has Reached a Verdict

The jury's verdict is not complicated, and can even be described as somewhat "technical".

The court did not directly address Musk's core allegation—that OpenAI betrayed its initial charitable mission by spinning off its profit-making business from its nonprofit parent and bringing in commercial investments from Microsoft and others. The jury bypassed this "soul-searching question" and dismissed all claims based on the statute of limitations.

California law states that such claims must be filed within three years of the relevant event occurring. The key milestones for OpenAI's opening to Microsoft and the gradual move towards commercialization had been public knowledge since around 2019. Musk did not file his lawsuit until 2024, which the jury determined exceeded the statutory deadline.

Nine votes to zero. Passed unanimously.

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers stated after the hearing that there is ample evidence to support the jury's ruling and made it clear that she is always ready to "dismiss" any appeal motions Musk might submit. Her forthrightness is quite rare.

OpenAI's chief attorney, William Savitt, characterized the verdict as directly dismantling the core of Musk's narrative—"This is not a technical decision, but a substantive decision. You filed your claims too late, and the reason you're doing this is because you (Musk) are holding these claims as a weapon against competition that you cannot contend with."

This statement carries significant weight. Its underlying implication is that Musk is not the plaintiff here, but a business rival using judicial proceedings as a weapon.

02 Litigation or Infighting?

To understand the real logic of this lawsuit, one must go back to 2015.

That year, Musk, Altman, and Greg Brockman and others co-founded OpenAI, explicitly positioning it as a nonprofit organization, with the mission of "developing safe artificial intelligence for all humanity." Musk provided significant funding early on and was deeply involved in discussions regarding the company's direction.

In 2018, he left the board, citing a "conflict of interest with Tesla's business."

The subsequent story is relatively well-known. OpenAI brought in Microsoft as an investor in 2019, gradually establishing a "limited profit" hybrid structure, while ChatGPT emerged, with its valuation skyrocketing. Meanwhile, Musk founded his own AI company, xAI, in 2023, launching the Grok model to directly compete with OpenAI.

In 2024, the lawsuit was formally filed. Musk accused Altman and Brockman of violating the initial philanthropic commitment, claiming that their commercialization of the company led to a surge in personal wealth—he used the words "stealing from the charitable organization."

This narrative has a certain moral resonance, but the timeline betrays him.

The key decisions regarding OpenAI's transition to commercialization happened between 2019 and 2021, and were conducted openly with extensive media coverage. Musk was not unaware; he chose to play this card only after his competitor had grown substantial, during the crucial window just before an IPO.

Musk's attorney, Marc Toberoff, insisted on the moral stance afterward—"This is a declaration against OpenAI's misuse of the charity, and if not for Musk, they would be getting away with it." But they also announced that they would appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, indicating that this battle is clearly not over.

03 Are All the Bad News for OpenAI Over?

From OpenAI's perspective, the significance of this ruling goes far beyond the law itself.

Wall Street analysts' interpretations are quite straightforward. Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, pointed out that the greatest potential threat from this lawsuit lies in the possibility that it could force OpenAI into a massive structural restructuring—if the court determines that the commercialization transition violated its charitable trust obligations, the entire company structure could face disruptive changes.

"Now, the worst case has basically been ruled out, which is a major positive for OpenAI's IPO."

A legal sword of Damocles that had loomed overhead for six years thus landed within two hours.

Meanwhile, OpenAI itself is experiencing a historic momentum in its business. Over the past two weeks, the company has released a series of signals: the newly launched GPT-5.5 Instant has become the default model for ChatGPT, reducing the hallucination rate in high-risk scenarios by over 50%; three real-time audio models for enterprise scenarios were launched simultaneously, among them GPT-Realtime-Translate supports real-time translation in over 70 languages; the Codex programming assistant is now accessible on mobile, allowing developers to review code and approve commands from anywhere.

At the same time, in a new round of financing completed about two weeks ago, OpenAI raised $12.2 billion at a valuation of $852 billion, with Amazon, NVIDIA, SoftBank, and Microsoft co-leading the investment. According to the latest data, the company's monthly revenue has reached approximately $2 billion, with weekly active users exceeding 900 million.

At this juncture, any legal risk that could lead to a company restructuring would be the most dangerous variable in the IPO process, and the ruling has cleared that reef.

Microsoft's statement is also quite intriguing—"The facts and timeline of this case have always been clear, and we welcome the jury's decision to dismiss these claims. We continue to be committed to our partnership with OpenAI." As OpenAI's largest external partner, Microsoft's wording is calm and resolute.

04 Unanswered Questions

One point that needs to be clarified is that the outcome of the verdict should not be overly interpreted as a moral "not guilty verdict."

The jury's dismissal was based on the statute of limitations, not on the assertion that "OpenAI did not betray its mission".

The court did not provide an answer to that core question throughout the process—after transforming from a nonprofit organization founded under the banner of "benefiting all humanity" into a commercial giant valued at hundreds of billions, where did its founding spirit go?

This question will not disappear with the end of a lawsuit.

In fact, as the IPO window approaches, the company is quietly adjusting its structure, redefining the relationship between the nonprofit part and the profit entity. This is not a concession to Musk, but a structural proposition that the entire AI industry's commercialization process must face.

The tension between technological idealism and business realism is the eternal underlying contradiction in Silicon Valley.

From Google's early "Don't be evil" to Facebook's "Connect the world," to OpenAI's "For all humanity," these lofty narratives at their founding have ultimately undergone varying degrees of deformation under the gravity of capital. Musk's anger, regardless of the motivation, actually touches on a real anxiety—when the technology that could reshape civilization is packaged into a commercial company preparing for an IPO, what should we really believe in?

This question cannot be answered by the court.

Musk announced the appeal, Altman won today, but the deeper debate about who AI should belong to and who should control it has only just entered a new phase.