One of the most important artificial intelligence companies, Open AI, is now free to seek more public investment, after the world's richest man, Elon Musk, lost his court case against it.Mr Musk had sued the company he co-founded and its boss Sam Altman in a California court, claiming the company had strayed from its original mission to benefit humanity.Musk lost on a technicality, with the court ruling he had waited too long to file the case.More InformationFeatured:    William Savitt, Sam Altman's lead attorneyProfessor Michael Wooldridge, University of OxfordLance Ulanoff, TechRadar editor- at- large Zeb Rice, King River Capital co-founderCreditsSamantha Donovan, PresenterRachel Hayter, ReporterAngus Randall, ReporterImage DetailsElon Musk(AP: Leon Neal/File)Program:More from PMTranscriptSamantha Donovan: One of the most important artificial intelligence companies, OpenAI, is now free to seek more public investment after the world's richest man, Elon Musk, lost his court case against it. Musk had sued the company he co-founded and its boss, Sam Altman, in a California court, claiming the company had strayed from its original mission to benefit humanity. Musk lost on a technicality with the court ruling he had waited too long to file a case. Rachel Hayter has more.Rachel Hayter: The albatross around Sam Altman's neck has been removed.William Savitt: Mr Musk's lawsuit is nothing more than an after the fact contrivance that bears no relationship to reality.Rachel Hayter: Victory for the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman. His lead attorney, William Savitt, praising the unanimous verdict of a California jury, that the world's richest man, Elon Musk, waited too long to sue his former business partner.William Savitt: You brought your claims too late and you did it because you were sitting on them to use them as a weapon of a competitor who can't compete in the marketplace.Rachel Hayter: This story started about a decade ago when Elon Musk made a charitable donation of more than $50 million to OpenAI, the company behind AI chatbot, ChatGPT, which at the time was a non-profit. After Mr Musk left the board, OpenAI became a for-profit company and an astronomically successful one. It's now valued at more than a trillion dollars. In 2024, Elon Musk accused OpenAI of stealing a charity and straying from its original mission to benefit humanity. The court's ruling today that Mr Musk waited too long to file this lawsuit means Sam Altman is now free to float one of the most consequential technology companies in the world.Michael Wooldridge: It clears the decks for them to go public and to make this, to sell their shares in the company on the public market and get the next stage of investment.Rachel Hayter: It would be one of the biggest corporate listings in history and it could happen as soon as this year. But artificial intelligence professor at the University of Oxford, Michael Wooldridge, is worried what the company's private expansion means for transparency.Michael Wooldridge: It's behind closed doors and you and I don't get to scrutinise it. I don't get to see what data is used by me, used about me in training these AI systems.Rachel Hayter: Lance Ulanoff is a technology expert and editor-at-large for the website TechRadar, who shares Professor Wooldridge's concerns.Lance Ulanoff: They don't really have regulation. They're telling us that they're moving at lightning speed to general artificial intelligence, which is AI that seems like it's as smart as us or smarter. We don't have a lot of controls. This to me was a hurdle that was kind of maybe slowing the company down a little bit. I don't think they'll be more reckless because of it, but I do think that it takes away that barrier and now they can move faster.Rachel Hayter: Co-founder of global venture capital firm King River Capital, Zeb Rice, has been investing in AI for nearly 20 years.Zeb Rice: So we're in this moment called hyperscaling with AI where the sergeni is out of the bottle. Humans have gotten the taste of what it's like to have a superintelligence next to you, supporting you in your work or your curiosity and they can't get enough of it.Rachel Hayter: While Elon Musk had argued that OpenAI was created as a non-profit to benefit humanity, offering artificial intelligence as a kind of public utility, Zeb Rice argues it's more like oil, a powerful resource that's not shared equally around the world.Zeb Rice: Because there's a strategic significance to it that on a geopolitical level, which is lost when you talk about sort of electricity, because you can generate electricity anywhere, but the way these foundation models are built, they reflect cultural values and the data centres that produce them are hugely expensive to build. And if you have those located not in your country, it's pretty easy to switch that off.Rachel Hayter: He believes the artificial intelligence sector could not continue its remarkable growth if it remains in the non-profit space.Zeb Rice: When you look at OpenAI is forecasting, I think it's 100 or 150 billion dollars of losses before they can actually get to a profit. Spending that kind of cap X on the hyperscaling of the factories to make this a artificial intelligence, you can't do that as a non-profit.Rachel Hayter: In a post on his social media platform X, Elon Musk says he'll appeal the verdict. He says the judge and jury never actually ruled on the merits of the case, just on a calendar technicality.Samantha Donovan: That report from Rachel Hayter and Angus Randall.  Appears In Anger grows over CGT changesDuration: 25 minutes 46 seconds25m 5itemsIn this episode1 of 5Business sector angered by tax changesDuration: 4 minutes 36 seconds4m 36s2 of 5Price cap for home aged care services delayed Duration: 4 minutes 4 seconds4m 4s3 of 5Putin set to arrive in ChinaDuration: 5 minutes 43 seconds5m 4 of 5PlayingElon Musk loses OpenAI caseDuration: 4 minutes 59 seconds4m 59s5 of 5Frustration over short stay rentalsDuration: 4 minutes 9 seconds4m 9s