Elon Musk testified in his deposition in Musk v. Altman: he “started to suspect that he was being swindled” by Sam Altman and Greg Brockman in 2017, and the he “felt that he was being tricked.”
Judge Gonzalez Rogers quoted this deposition testimony of Musk in his lawsuit against Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI.
But the Judge rejected that these sentiments of Musk establish that Musk knew that he could not rely on Altman’s and Brockman’s statements in 2017, thereby barring his constructive fraud claim due to the statute of limitations having expired by the time he later filed this lawsuit.
Judge Gonzalez Rogers concluded that Musk kept on donating even after his suspicion had been raised in 2017–and a jury could conclude he did so due to Altman’s and Brockman’s repeated assurances about the nonprofit status of OpenAI:
