Elon Musk lands in Memphis the day after losing the OpenAI trial

Elon Musk flew from Moffett Federal Airfield in Mountain View, California, to Memphis International Airport early Tuesday morning, May 19, aboard his Gulfstream G550, tail N272BG. The three-hour, forty-minute flight arrived at 5:46 UTC, placing him in Tennessee the same week a federal jury in Oakland ruled against him in his high-stakes lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman.

The timing is notable. On Monday, May 18, a jury in Oakland found that Musk filed his claims outside the three-year statute of limitations, dismissing his bid to force OpenAI topple OpenAI's for-profit structure and claw back as much as $180 billion in alleged ill-gotten gains, per a CNBC report. Musk called the verdict a “calendar technicality” on X and vowed to appeal. The trial had consumed much of the past three weeks, with Musk testifying for three days before being placed on recall status — a condition that did not prevent him from traveling to China with President Donald Trump earlier this month, as NBC News reported.

Memphis is not a recurring destination in Musk's flight history, which typically shuttles between Austin, Silicon Valley, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Washington. The trip may be tied to xAI or SpaceX business; Memphis is a growing data-center hub, and Musk's AI venture xAI has been expanding its compute infrastructure. The flight arrives the morning after a courtroom defeat, suggesting the billionaire is turning attention back to his companies rather than lingering in Northern California.