ChatGPT creator Sam Altman has claimed a courtroom victory against his OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk after a federal jury in California threw out a lawsuit in which the Tesla founder claimed that the artificial intelligence company had violated an agreement to operate solely as a nonprofit.
Musk helped to found OpenAI in 2015, when it was established as a charitable nonprofit, however he left the company in 2018 over reported conflicts with some of his co-founders.
In 2024, he then launched a lawsuit against OpenAI, Altman, and his co-founder Greg Brockman, asking that a jury award him $150 billion in damages, while accusing the company of a “breach of charitable trust,” according to CNBC.
However, a jury determined on May 18 that Musk waited too long to file the lawsuit—stating that the three-year statute of limitations had expired, a decision that Musk slammed as a “calendar technicality” in a post shared to his social media website, X.
“There is no question to anyone following the case in detail that Altman & Brockman did in fact enrich themselves by stealing a charity. The only question is WHEN they did it!” he wrote, while vowing to appeal the jury’s decision.
Musk’s courtroom loss came at the end of a three-week trial during which the breakdown of the SpaceX founder’s once-close friendship with Altman took center stage.
Inside Sam Altman’s $124 million property portfolio
The legal proceedings also came amid something of a difficult time for ChatGPT creator Altman, who arrived at court for the start of the trial in April just days after his San Francisco home was targeted in two separate attacks.
According to a statement issued by OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT, the first attack took place in the early morning on April 10.
“Early this morning, someone threw a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman’s home and also made threats at our San Francisco headquarters,” the statement read.
“Thankfully, no one was hurt. We deeply appreciate how quickly [the San Francisco Police Department] responded and the support from the city in helping keep our employees safe. The individual is in custody, and we’re assisting law enforcement with their investigation.”
The San Francisco Police Department confirmed to NBC News in a separate statement that officers had responded to “a fire investigation” at an address in the North Beach neighborhood of the city at around 4:12 a.m. local time.
Less than an hour later, police responded to reports of “an unknown male threatening to burn down” a corporate building on the street where OpenAI’s headquarters is located. It’s understood that he was identified by officers as the same man who had been seen near Altman’s private home.
That suspect, who was identified as Daniel Alejandro Moreno-Gama, has since been charged with attempted murder and attempted arson. During a court appearance in San Francisco on May 5, he pleaded not guilty to all charges against him.
Two days after the suspected Molotov cocktail incident, the San Francisco Police Department issued a statement confirming that two suspects—Amanda Tom, 25, and Muhamad Tarik Hussein, 23—had been taken into custody after officers responded to “a suspicious occurrence of possible shots fired” near Altman’s home.
“Through the course of the investigation, officers learned that a vehicle with two occupants drove past a residence around the time of the possible shooting,” the SFPD noted. “Investigators assigned to the Special Investigation Division (SID) took over the investigation and determined the vehicle belonged to 25-year-old Amanda Tom of San Francisco.
“Officers responded to the 2000 block of Taylor Street and detained Tom and 23-year-old Muhamad Tarik Hussein without incident. A search warrant for the residence was conducted, and officers located and seized three firearms. Investigators developed probable cause to arrest Amanda Tom and Muhamad Hussein.”
Both Tom and Hussein were then taken to the San Francisco County Jail, where they were booked for negligent discharge.
Altman owns multiple properties in San Francisco, all of which are located on the same street in the city’s Russian Hill neighborhood. He purchased the compound for a total of $65.4 million over several years.
He also owns a sprawling estate in Hawaii, which he quietly purchased for $43 million in 2021—three years before it served as the venue for his wedding to longtime partner Oliver Mulherin.
The ChatGPT creator did actually make a move to offload that property in November 2025, when he put it on the market for $49 million, however that listing was taken down amid his legal battle with Musk.
Set on a staggering 21.8 acres of “secluded luxury,” the property features a total of 10 bedrooms and 11.5 bathrooms, which are split between a main residence and a guesthouse. When it was listed, the home was the second most expensive Hawaii property on the market at that time.
In the five years since he bought the property, which was previously owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, Altman has made many upgrades and updates, per the listing—which drew particular attention to the “advanced security systems” that had been put in place to “guarantee peace and discretion.”
When he is not spending time in San Francisco or Hawaii, however, Altman can be found enjoying his stunning ranch in Napa, CA, where—he previously told The New York Times—he and Mulherin spend most of their weekends.
Altman invited a Times reporter, Cade Metz, to visit the home in 2023, with the resulting article noting that the 25-year-old home had been remodeled to “look both folksy and contemporary.”
The report stated that Altman, who is a vegetarian, and his then-partner were raising beef cattle on the land surrounding the home, which was tended to by farmhands, who also grew wine grapes on the property.
According to records, the ranch—which spans a staggering 950 acres—was purchased for $15.7 million in 2020, having initially been listed for $25.5 million.
What to know about Elon Musk’s complex real estate holdings
Meanwhile Musk’s property portfolio tells a very different story—one that begins with the Tesla founder’s claims in 2021 that he was residing in a humble $50,000 dwelling in Texas, which he said at the time he was renting from his company, SpaceX.
“My primary home is literally a ~$50K house in Boca Chica/Starbase that I rent from SpaceX. It’s kinda awesome though,” he said in an X post, before explaining that the only other house he owned at the time was an “events house” in the San Francisco Bay Area.
However, it has since been revealed that Musk does in fact own at least two other homes—one in Texas and another in California.
News of his ownership of the Austin dwelling emerged after it was revealed that he had become embroiled in a bitter legal spat with his neighbors in the leafy community of West Lake Hills over an enormous 16-foot chain-link fence that he had erected around his $6 million dwelling.
Musk’s fellow residents also voiced complaints about the constant presence of security guards in and around the property, as well as the increase in traffic thanks to the many guests who appeared to be visiting the home at all hours of the day.
The billionaire businessman managed to claim victory on at least one of those points in July after the West Lake Hills City Council voted to allow him to keep the fencing and gates erected at the property, provided that he adjusts their design to meet local regulations, according to local news outlet KUT News.
It is currently unclear whether Musk is using the Austin abode as his primary residence, however news of his neighborly feud came not long after The ew York Times claimed that the businessman had actually purchased three mansions in the Austin area—for a total of $35 million—that he planned to use to house all of his children, as well as several of the women he shares them with.
Musk is currently confirmed to have fathered at least 13 children since 2002; however, conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair claimed in February that she had welcomed a baby boy with the Tesla founder, who has yet to acknowledge paternity.
He did, however, deny the Times’ report that he was building a compound for his kids.
In addition to his Austin residence, Musk also recently added another property back into his portfolio: a Los Angeles home that was once owned by Hollywood legend Gene Wilder.
The tech tycoon originally bought the property in 2013 for $6.75 million; however, he made the decision to sell it in 2020, when he announced plans to get rid of “almost all his physical possessions,” including Wilder’s former home.
Still, the SpaceX founder made clear his enduring connection to the property, writing in a post shared on X that, while he planned to “own no house,” any person or persons who took ownership of the Wilder property would be barred from demolishing it or making any major changes to its design.
“Gene Wilder’s old house … cannot be [torn] down or lose any [of] its soul,” he stipulated.
Months later, it was revealed that Musk had found the perfect person to take control of the dwelling—Wilder’s own nephew, Jordan Walker-Pearlman. Walker-Pearlman and his wife, Elizabeth Hunter, purchased the home from the businessman for $7 million that same year.
At the time, Musk was hailed for his generosity after it was reported that he had not only sold the home to the couple for under its estimated market value, but had also loaned them a hefty $6.7 million to help them with its purchase.
However, that seemingly sweet scenario quickly turned sour four years later, when Walker-Pearlman and Hunter fell behind on their loan payments, leading Musk to file a notice of default.
That original default notice, which was dated July 29, 2024, stated that the property “may be sold without court action” if the owners had fallen behind in their payments.
Though a public auction of the property was scheduled to be held on Dec. 3, 2024, records filed the following month revealed that the home had been bought back by the same LLC through which Musk originally purchased it.
It’s not currently known what Musk plans to do with the property—having seemingly purchased it the first time around more as a trophy home than an actual residence.
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