OpenAI Won’t Shake Musk’s Fraud Suit Ahead of Trial, Judge Says

OpenAI Inc. and its CEO Sam Altman are unlikely to obtain a pretrial defeat of billionaire Elon Musk’s lawsuits claiming the generative AI company engaged in fraud by betraying its founding principles as a nonprofit.

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers at a Wednesday hearing in federal court in Oakland, Calif., said a jury must decide whether Altman promised Musk at the time of OpenAI’s founding that the company would refrain from converting to a for-profit entity. However, she stopped short of formally ruling from the bench.

Rogers, who had scheduled a jury trial to begin March 30, said Musk presented sufficient ...