Elon Musk was handed back-to-back losses with the latest developments in different legal proceedings with President Donald Trump and Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI.
President Donald Trump got a $10 million settlement out of his lawsuit against X for deplatforming him. Meanwhile, a judge found that Musk’s unofficial $97.4 billion bid for OpenAI contradicts his lawsuit against the $157 billion AI company.
The motive behind Elon Musk’s OpenAI lawsuit is now being called into question at the same time that the X social media company he acquired from Jack Dorsey is expected to pay out a $10 million settlement to his close pal, President Donald Trump.
Elon Musk inherited the Trump lawsuit
Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, will pay President Trump $10 million to settle a lawsuit filed after the social media platform banned him following his involvement in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
The lawsuit was filed against X while Jack Dorsey was still CEO. After Elon Musk purchased X, he reinstated Trump’s account and began developing a relationship with the president, spending $250 million on his re-election campaign.
However, his status as “first buddy” did not stop Trump’s legal team from going ahead with the suit, although they did consider abandoning it.
The $10 million settlement will mark the second time a social media platform has paid President Trump millions after the 2021 siege of the Capitol. In January, Meta lost a similar lawsuit to President Trump and had to pay $25 million to settle. The lawsuit came because Facebook suspended Trump’s account.
President Trump’s attorneys are expected to pursue a similar settlement with Google over its decision to ban the president from YouTube after the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Judge rules in favor of Altman vs. Musk
In a court filing on February 12, 2025, OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, emphasized that Elon Musk’s offer to buy the company undermines his lawsuit’s claim that OpenAI’s assets should not be “transferred away” for “private gain.”
Elon Musk’s problems began after he made an all-cash bid to buy OpenAI from Sam Altman. He made an unsolicited offer of $97.4 billion to acquire the company. Sam Altman has leveraged that bid to point out the contradiction in Elon’s lawsuit.
Musk’s lawsuit has been questioned before by a hearing judge, Judge Gonzalez Rogers, who remarked that it was a “stretch” for Musk to assert he would suffer irreparable harm without judicial intervention to halt OpenAI’s corporate restructuring.
Musk’s lawsuit requests an immediate court order to halt OpenAI’s transition to a for-profit model, alleging that such a move deviates from the organization’s original non-profit mission.
However, OpenAI’s legal team is now arguing that Musk’s proposal to buy the company is inconsistent with his stated concerns. This suggests that his legal actions against OpenAI may just be an attempt to disrupt a competitor rather than uphold the company’s foundational principles, as he claims.
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