(Reuters) -A U.S. court on Tuesday denied billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk a preliminary injunction he was seeking against ChatGPT-maker OpenAI's efforts to convert into a for-profit firm.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California said she is prepared to expedite a trial on the issue of conversion to later this year.

OpenAI, Microsoft ( MSFT ) and Musk did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment.

Last year, Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, saying that OpenAI's founders originally approached him to fund a nonprofit focused on developing artificial intelligence to benefit humanity, but that it is now focused on making money.

OpenAI has been trying to transition from a nonprofit into a for-profit entity, which it says it needs to do to secure the capital required to develop the best AI models.

(Reporting by Gnaneshwar Rajan in Bengaluru; Editing by Varun H K)