Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI (left), and Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX (right) [AFP=Yonhap News]

A U.S. court has once again ruled in favor of Altman in a lawsuit between Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Reuters reported on the 15th (local time) that the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed the trade secret infringement lawsuit filed by xAI against OpenAI.

xAI, an artificial intelligence (AI) company led by Elon Musk, had claimed that Li Xuechen, a principal engineer who left xAI to join OpenAI, leaked confidential information related to the Grok chatbot. xAI alleged that OpenAI orchestrated this leak.

They also claimed that the leaked confidential information pertained to their cutting-edge AI technology, which they asserted possessed superior capabilities compared to OpenAI's ChatGPT.

In response, OpenAI's legal team countered, stating, "OpenAI does not need or want the trade secrets of others, especially those of xAI, which is failing in the market and experiencing an exodus of talent."

Grok is currently considered a model with relatively low recognition in the generative AI market, trailing behind Google's Gemini, OpenAI's ChatGPT, and Anthropic's Claude.

Grok [Reuters=Yonhap News]

Li worked at xAI in 2024, participating in the development of Grok, and joined OpenAI in 2025.

xAI claimed that Li conducted a presentation to OpenAI as part of his transition and was instructed to leak confidential information during this process.

In relation to this, Judge Rita Lin explained that it is common practice to inquire about a candidate's previous work during the hiring process and that this cannot be interpreted as pressure to leak confidential information.

Furthermore, the court ruled that proceeding with the lawsuit would be meaningless due to a lack of evidence that OpenAI induced the leak.

Last month, Musk and Altman were also engaged in a "lawsuit of the century."

Musk filed a lawsuit demanding the dismissal of CEO Altman and the return of unjust profits, alleging that OpenAI abandoned its commitment to operate as a non-profit and transitioned to a for-profit entity, causing him damages. However, he lost the case due to the statute of limitations having expired.