Hacker News

Musk should have just made another company and then he’d have another 500 billion but he had that mistake and now it’s over. Then again we’ll see how well open ai does over the long term

I think this is missing the main point that Musk was never the owner of OpenAI, neither was Sam, nor the employees. The owners are the American people. I presume Musk got a tax rebate from his donation, courtesy of the taxpayer; so did every other donor.

The fact is, OpenAI was a non-profit belonging to the public and it was appropriated by the donors... Who already got their tax cuts.

This is setting a precedent that if you donate a certain amount of money to a charity, you can later convert it to a for-profit and claim to be an owner of the charity... On the basis of 'donations' which you got a tax rebate from. Very convenient.

OpenAI donors should have created a new, separate, for-profit entity completely distinct from OpenAI, with a different name, poached the original employees, implemented all the logic from scratch, collected all the training data from scratch... This would have been correct. Basically what Anthropic did seems more like the correct way.

Part of the Statute of Limitations isn't just on when he filed the claim, but when he found out or should have found out, by reasonable diligence that he had a claim at all.

So the question before the jury has a significant component of "Should he have found out by this time?" Which is a question of fact, and facts are typically decided by juries, in the US at least.

The two parties can agree together to let a judge decide facts like this, but generally, if one or the other party wants it to go to a jury, it does.

I'm guessing part of Musk's strategy was to have it go to the jury, which are often seen as easier to manipulate than judges, especially when a case is weak. Or perhaps his team already knew this particular judge would be inclined to rule against him, so did the next best thing.

Elon argued that even though the events in question took place sometime between 2017 and 2020 OpenAI intentionally hid the information from him until 2022-2023 which is why he wasn't able to file the lawsuit until 2024.

That's what the jury found against - they said he was reasonably informed enough to have brought the suit earlier and thus the 3 year clock should start ticking in 2020 not 2023.

In the US, judges make determinations of law, but juries (in a jury trial at least) must evaluate the evidence to make findings of fact. So the jury would need to make a finding as to when the statute of limitations started ticking based on the evidence, and the judge then makes the legal determination that the statutory period has lapsed.

In the American system juries figure out questions of fact and judges figure out questions of law.

In this case I guess the question was 'when did the incident actually happen' with Elon arguing it was later then Altman.

In the US (I believe all common law systems), the jury is the trier of fact. If there is a genuine factual dispute between the two parties in a lawsuit, then that dispute is resolved by a jury (unless the parties opt-out).

Statutes of limitations are usually not tried by juries because the underlying facts that cause them to kick in are usually not in actual dispute. Instead a fight over statute of limitation is more likely to be over which statute applies or whether some other mitigating circumstance is kicking in, which are matters of law which do not go to a jury.

In this case the judge determined that it did require a trial and refused to dismiss based on statute of limitations.

If it’s a very clear fact yes a judge can make the call. In this case what Musk knew was part of that and a jury then had to make the call on what the fact was.

That's like saying can't the Judge decide who the killer was when he literally saw the video of shooting.

But this "conversion" was apparently not the focus of the suit, according to OP. Perhaps it occurred after they initiated legal proceedings?

Or just ruin their already shaky reputations.

The guy he's suing is also a billionaire who can keep his enemies tied up in court needlessly until the day he dies, although that billionaire's net worth is only around 1% of Elon Musk's, so in a sense you're right that Musk is picking on the little guy.

That fact here was if Musk should have known about the potential breach of charitable trust before 2021 given it started in 2019, if not before, with Microsoft investment and he didn't sue until 2024. There is a 3 year statute of limitations.

The statute of limitations exists to prevent unreasonable delay, to protect defendants from prejudice due to loss of evidence to the passage of time, and to recognize that people who are injured tend to complain immediately and not sit on their claims.

This case demonstrates why. Musk only complained after OpenAI was commercially successful with ChatGPT and after he started a competing effort. He repeatedly said “I do not know” and “I do not recall” on the stand, and argued that the passage of time made it hard for him to remember facts that would have been helpful for OpenAI.

Because there has to be some point. It's unjust to allow someone to sue 30 years later, as everyone would have a sword of Damocles hanging over their head waiting for the right moment to strike. And in general, if you didn't realize you were robbed for 3 years, perhaps it's the case that you weren't actually robbed.

https://localnewsmatters.org/2026/05/16/musk-v-altman-week-3... has a good explanation of the legalities:

"If the jury determines that at any time before those dates, Musk either knew — or had or should have known — that he had a claim that he could bring, then his suit was brought too late. The consequence of being too late is swift and absolute. If the lawsuit was filed late for a particular claim, that claim is out of the case; if it was too late for all of Musk’s claims, the lawsuit is over."

That's where the question of fact (i.e., the requirement for a jury decision) came in: "What was the statute of limitations?" is a question of law, but "When should Musk have known that OpenAI was moving too much toward for-profit?" is a question of fact (and, here, determines whether the statute of limitations applies).

There are multiple reasons why statutes of limitations exist, one of them being that the further away in time, the harder it is to prove evidence. Witnesses may have died, or their memory may be more faulty.

This is not a robbery, though. Not in the "break in and steal stuff from your house multiple times" situation. Legally, each of those are separate events, and one doesn't really affect the other unless it's all the same person, and the repetition is used to get a stronger case, etc.

There are several legal principles in play here. Note that these are civil trial issues and when you're talking about "robbing", you're likely talking about a criminal issue. These are:

1. Estoppel. If a party relies on your conduct then you can lose the right to sue over it;

2. Laches. This is a defense against prejudicial conduct, typically by waiting too long to take action;

3. Waiver. Your conduct can waive your right to sue. Imagine you live with someone and they don't pay half of the rent so you cover it. At some point your continued conduct means you lose the right to sue; and

4. The statute of limitations. Some claims simply have to be brought within a certain period. How this applies can be really complex. For example, we saw this in Trump's fraud convictions in New York. His time in office, away from the jurisdiction, essentially suspended the statute of limitations.

Some crimes like murder have no statute of limitations. Others have unreasonably short statutes of limitations. For example, probably nobody can be charged in relation to sex trafficking in the Epstein saga because the statute of limitations is often 5 years with such crimes. This is unreasonable (IMHO) because often the victims are children and unable to make a criminal complaint.

It's also worth adding that not all legal systems have such wide-ranging statutes of limitation as the US does. Founding principles of those other legal systems is that the government shouldn't be arbitrarily restricted for prosecuting criminal conduct. The US system ostensibly favors "timely" prosecution.

You raise all your defenses in the trial, you only get one. If they'd wanted to put all their eggs on the statute of limitations point then they could, but you can understand why defense lawyers generally don't do that.

From other comments, it came down to when Musk could reasonably be judged as aware of the injury.

Agree. If this is a precondition, why force people to share their diaries and stuff? Is it all to claim they hid material things that would have led to an earlier filing?

The amount of cope people have around Elon’s irrational drug addict behavior is insane. Was lying about being good at video games and getting caught also 8D chess too?

Which they are unlikely to do because the California AG signed off on the original IP transfer agreement…

The interested parties would be taxpayers. I think some groups are trying to look into it.

The issue is that they did R&D as a charity, donations to which are tax deductible, there may also be other benefits to being a charity during R&D but that’s a big one, then once the thing works, setup a for profit, sell ip at “fair value”, get some investment, then things are ready for business.

I read there’s no statute of limitations on a tax issue like this, so I guess it might be hanging over them indefinitely.

I’m not a big taxation and government fan, they’d probably just waste the money anyways. It does seem unfair OpenAI gets to use this loophole though, unless all companies can make their R&D investment tax deductible, and get any other benefits of this setup.

Because they got to participate in the early investment in the for profit entity.

> Early Angels (Reid Hoffman, Peter Thiel, and others): Approximately $10 million invested, current value $1.4 billion. That corresponds to a return of around 140x.

https://www.trendingtopics.eu/openai-cap-table-leak/

Or more specifically: One just did sue, but lost because he waited too long.

Wasn't an arms length transaction so shennanigans (or lack of) cannot be proved.

(This is just a thought IANAL)

Maybe one of the scientists who cashed out 8 figures will file a suit that OpenAI has wronged them by depriving them of the joy of working

Nobody else has come forward because the number of people with a potential legal claim for asserting any such harm was a small group of between 2 and 6 people, of which Musk was one (setting aside SOL issues).

It's hard to know without knowing the terms of the settlement. It could have easily been something he knew OpenAI would find to be unacceptable.

I think regardless it would be extremely hard for him to make people hate Altman et al. more than himself. Altman's flaws are more subtle and require paying attention to a pattern of behavior. Musk has beem pure cringe for 5+ years now.

It seems like the real sour grapes are over the fact they wouldn't let him run OpenAI. If he cared about a payday, ironically, he probably would have had more success because he would have brought this suit sooner.

I think this depends on point of view. I do think much of this comes down to sour grapes that they didn't let Elon control OpenAI, and this is the wedge he chose to retaliate. Would he have sour grapes if he didn't want to win the AI race himself?

Really comes down to what you think his primary motivation is and what are just benefits.

That's fair although I didn't mean to imply that I thought it was a rational move. I think if he had won, it might have actually been worse for him (who knows what the collateral damage to the AI bubble would have been). I just think his goal was mostly to do as much harm as possible to people he clearly hates.

Every AI model swallowing the entire world of digital and physical data to then be resold back to the people will forever be the biggest heist ever pulled off in our lifetime. I’m shocked how little it gets talked about, and how convenient it is that many of these companies lost or burned their paper trails

The jury didn't say it isn't either. All they ruled on was that it was too late for Musk to even broach the question.

I think that your first statement is correct.

I do not think that your second was correct.

The lawyer himself is guaranteed another 6 months of lucrative work of they appeal...

Whereas no appeal is effectively him getting fired.

Nothing like 'vexatious litigation' in the US?

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/vexatious-litigants

No. Once the jury made its finding of fact as to when the event giving rise to the claim occurred (and to when the SOL clock would start ticking), the appeal would have to determine that the jury could not have reasonably made such a finding. It's very, very rare for an appeals court to overturn a finding of fact.

Are you a lawyer? IANAL but my understanding is it would be difficult for an appeal to succeed. Appeals courts only evaluate review matters of law, not of fact. Whether is has been more than the 3 year limit the statute of limitations places is a matter of fact I think. And the advisory jury makes this much harder to appeal. What do you think the grounds for appeal will be?

In this case, I think it is a jury's finding of fact re: the statute of limitations. Unless the appellate court finds that the trial court and jury is clearly erroneous, it will usually give significant deference to that finding.

A state of limitations case is actually one of the strongest kinds of legal defenses a defendant can have.

It's a foundational issue that goes to whether the court is even allowed to proceed with the case. A defendant could be guilty/liable/whatever of the alleged claims, and it wouldn't matter. If the statute of limitations has run, they're in the clear.

The only counter to an SOL defense is to try and claim that the SOL was paused for some reason, but those exceptions are very narrow and wouldn't apply here (and in the real world very rarely apply to civil cases).

Pretty sure it's the opposite: appeals mostly only work when the decision is not clear cut, and the statute of limitations is.

Filing the same lawsuit a second time is different. They're talking about appealing the decision in this case. You don't get tossed in jail for that.

But (at least in the US), the appeals court does not have to accept your appeal. When you file the appeal, you have to give them enough reason for them to even listen to your appeal, instead of rejecting it from the first filing.

I wonder if a more "hardcore" team, by his words, would have handled this legal case better?

To be fair, twitter ended up useful for him when he used it to buy his way into the US government and close down all the departments that were investigating his companies for breaking all sorts of laws.

Did you read the article:"...that his lawsuits had been filed too late."

And the Trump thing, which cratered his car business

Extreme smartness has its own failure modes

If anyone can afford burning cash for his ego it's the richest man in the world with the biggest ego in the world.

Yes, and more burnt cash (and hopefully emotional energy) would be an acceptable outcome

IANAL but civil statute of limitations is based on when the prosecuting party reasonably discovered they were wronged and had legal recourse, not when the event happened. It is entirely possible to debate when that was in this case.

For criminal cases at least, the statue of limitations is not set in stone. But probably for civil, its much more cut and dry.

They're willing to work under the current snake, even got him back after he was removed, so why not musk?

Fifth place is fine, when the numbers and power in question are that large.

As I understand it, Anthropic exists in part as a quirk of how Dario Amodei's experience at OpenAI went. In the world where Musk controls OpenAI, I don't think you can assume Anthropic splinters off the same way (for overdetermined reasons! I'm not saying Musk is a better manager.)

Tesla wasn't "successful" before he "took it over" (read: invested most of their seed capital and ran the actual day-to-day operations).

SpaceX, founded entirely by him alone, is also the most valuable space technology company on earth, so...

10 years returns S&P 500 (index of all those better than Musk): 261% Tesla: 2700%

Disclaimer: My portfolio is 65% Tesla.

I absolute abhor the man but I think this is silly. No doubt that he has had luck and help, but he is still a good businessman. He's certainly an asshole (almost certainly dark triad territory), but I think that can be a benefit when creating a business.

What Altman and Brockman did still seems highly unethical.

> It's the same with taxi medallions or hotel regulations if you're trying to start Uber or AirBNB.

They didn’t do any lobbying? ^_^

Presumably better at being devious. Elon is sloppy...

Be more afraid of the technocrat who doesn't even have a tell. It means they are better at manipulation.

That's not what the article stated. The jury had to find that the harms occurred prior to certain dates in 2021, not that Musk had to file before then.

Can some lawyer explain the rationale of statute of limitations? Like why does a robber get to get away with the crime if they are able to evade the police for x number of years. Is it just because the trials suck after a while cuz no one remembers anything?

I recognize the value of the statute of limitations, but it is a technicality, and unfortunately, the central legal questions of this case were not addressed.

I am absolutely certain that if Sam was suing xAI and the case got dismissed on a technicality people would be lined up with screeds about the injustice of the situation.

It can be both

Then why did the American justice system needed nine jurors when a clerk could have sufficed?

The American judicial system is completely Byzantine and rotten, from top to bottom. Worse than many third world countries.

Like any case involving legal matters, they are talking about things they deeply do not understand.