A U.S. federal court dismissed a lawsuit by Elon Musk’s company xAI against OpenAI that alleged the unlawful acquisition of trade secrets related to the Grok chatbot.
This was reported by Reuters.
The judge dismissed the case with prejudice (barring refiling), calling further litigation “futile.”
What Musk accuses OpenAI of
The lawsuit alleged unlawful appropriation of confidential information, including source code, when xAI employees moved to work at OpenAI.
Judge Lin had already dismissed an earlier version of the complaint in February, after which xAI filed an amended complaint.
The updated complaint centered on a presentation that former xAI employee Xuechen Li gave during his interview at OpenAI.
According to Musk’s company, OpenAI sought to obtain secrets about the release of the Grok 4 model in July 2025, because the ChatGPT update allegedly could not compete in complex logical reasoning, and OpenAI itself lagged in reinforcement-learning and post-training techniques that Li was familiar with.
However, the judge noted that xAI failed to prove that OpenAI induced the former engineer to disclose confidential data about the Grok chatbot or that OpenAI engineers were aware of any potential disclosure.
The judge emphasized that discussing candidates’ previous work experience during hiring is routine practice.
What OpenAI says
OpenAI said the lawsuit is just another stage in a campaign of harassment by Musk.
Company lawyers also argued that OpenAI does not need others’ secrets, especially from xAI, which, they said, is failing in the market and losing talent.
Additionally, OpenAI asserts that Xuechen Li never worked for them and that xAI’s secrets did not come into their possession.
Musk’s previous lawsuits against OpenAI
In May 2026, a California court dismissed Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman.
A panel of nine jurors unanimously rejected Musk’s claims, noting that he had enough information to file suit well before 2024. The verdict came after about two hours of deliberation.
Elon Musk argued that OpenAI had strayed from its original mission — to develop AI for the benefit of humanity — and become a commercial entity.
However, the jurors did not consider the issue on the merits, because they found the lawsuit to be time-barred.
Read also: Sam Altman under Congress scrutiny: the OpenAI CEO’s business ties will be reviewed before the IPO
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https://en.ain.ua/2026/06/16/us-court-finally-dismissed-elon-musks-lawsuit-against-openai/