Jury tosses Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI and its boss Sam Altman

A California jury has tossed out Elon Musk's high-profile lawsuit against OpenAI and its boss Sam Altman.

In a unanimous verdict, the case was thrown out because Musk filed his lawsuit after a statute of limitations to bring such claims had 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).

Musk had argued Altman deceived him by accepting his charity and then reneging on OpenAI's original non-profit mission to develop artificial intelligence (AI) technology for the benefit of humanity.

Jurors spent three weeks viewing internal correspondence and hearing testimony, and arrived at a verdict after deliberating for roughly two hours.

Those witnesses included Musk and Altman themselves, plus Satya Nadella, the chief executive of Microsoft, which Musk accused of helping in the scheme.

Musk's claims against Microsoft were dismissed as a matter of law given the jury's findings on the two claims against OpenAI.

The pair started OpenAI in 2015 but Musk left in 2018 after his co-founders denied him control.