Court rejects Musk's injunction, deals blow to anti-OpenAI crusade

A federal judge just told Elon Musk that his legal blitz against OpenAI isn’t working. On March 4, the court rejected Musk’s request for a preliminary injunction, flatly stating he hadn’t “demonstrated likelihood of success on the merits” of his claims. Several counts were dismissed outright. For OpenAI, this is more than a procedural win — it’s validation that the narrative Musk has been pushing in court doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.

OpenAI didn’t mince words in its response, calling the lawsuit a “baseless, cynically self-serving” effort designed to hamstring a competitor while Musk builds out his own for-profit venture, xAI. The company pointed to old emails showing Musk wanted to fold a for-profit OpenAI into Tesla. When that didn’t happen and he couldn’t “seize control,” he walked. The current litigation, OpenAI argues, is just the latest chapter in that sour grapes saga — a rival trying to use the legal system to slow down a company that thrived without him.

The ruling also let OpenAI reinforce a structural point it’s been hammering for months: the non-profit isn’t going anywhere. Despite Musk’s repeated claims of a “conversion,” OpenAI insists there’s no plan to sell off or dissolve the non-profit arm. Instead, they’re framing any restructuring as a way to make the non-profit “one of the most well-resourced non-profits in history” by giving it a significant stake in the proposed public-benefit corporation. The board, they say, is “doubling down” — not cashing out.

There’s a grim irony here. Musk argued back in 2017 that OpenAI needed to evolve its structure. He later set up xAI as a public-benefit corporation — the very model OpenAI is now pursuing. The difference, of course, is that his own company isn’t the target. This ruling doesn’t end the case, but it does suggest the court sees the gap between Musk’s public crusade and his private business interests. And in a legal fight, that gap matters more than tweets.