Elon Musk against OpenAI: asks the judge to stop its big change and its future could waver

Since Elon Musk left the OpenAI project, where he was not only one of the first people involved but also one of its biggest investors in the early years. At that time, Elon Musk trusted in the human and good work of AI and OpenAI. For the past year, it’s been all lawsuits and complaints for those who were his colleagues and partners.

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The lawyers of tech billionaire Elon Musk have requested a preliminary injunction against OpenAI, several of its co-founders, and its investor and close collaborator, Microsoft, to prevent OpenAI and other named defendants from engaging in what Musk’s lawyer claims is anticompetitive behavior.

The request for a precautionary measure, filed late Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accuses OpenAI, its CEO Sam Altman, its president Greg Brockman, Microsoft, LinkedIn co-founder and former OpenAI board member Reid Hoffman, and former OpenAI board member and Microsoft vice president Dee Templeton of various illicit activities, and seeks to stop them.

What Elon Musk demands from OpenAI

The accusations included in the lawsuit, as we have read, are:

1. Dissuade investors from backing OpenAI rivals like Musk’s own AI company, xAI.
2. Benefit from “competitively sensitive information improperly obtained” through OpenAI’s connections with Microsoft.
3. Convert OpenAI’s governance structure into a for-profit company and “transfer any material assets, including intellectual property owned, possessed, or controlled by OpenAI, Inc., its subsidiaries, or affiliates.”
4. Make OpenAI do business with organizations in which any defendant has a “material financial interest.”

Musk’s lawyers claim that “irreparable harm” will occur if the injunction is not granted.

“The plaintiffs and the public need a pause,” they wrote in the filing. “A court order to preserve what remains of OpenAI’s non-profit character, free from self-dealing, is the only appropriate remedy.” Otherwise, the OpenAI promised to Musk and the public will have disappeared by the time the court gets to the bottom of the matter.

The motion is the latest salvo in Musk’s legal battle against OpenAI, which fundamentally accuses the company of abandoning its original non-profit mission to make the fruits of its AI research available to everyone. Musk withdrew the lawsuit in July, but revived it later this summer. Earlier this month, an amended lawsuit included new defendants, including Microsoft, Hoffman, and Templeton, and two new plaintiffs: Shivon Zilis, a Neuralink executive and former OpenAI board member, and xAI.

Musk has claimed in previous lawsuits that he has been defrauded of more than 44 million dollars that he says he donated to OpenAI taking advantage of his “well-known concern for existential damages” of AI. Musk, one of the co-founders of OpenAI, left the company in 2018 due to disagreements about its direction.

History of OpenAI, from 2015 to 2024

OpenAI was launched in 2015 as a non-profit organization and, in 2019, it became a capped-profit where the non-profit organization became the governing entity of a for-profit subsidiary. The company is in the process of becoming a fully for-profit corporation, which reportedly would allow OpenAI to maintain its non-profit status as a separate entity.

Elon Musk created his response to OpenAI, xAI, last year. Shortly after, the company launched Grok, an artificial intelligence model that now powers a series of features on Musk’s social network, X (formerly known as Twitter). xAI also offers an API that allows customers to integrate Grok into third-party applications, platforms, and services.

In the request for a precautionary measure, Musk’s lawyers argue that OpenAI is depriving xAI of capital by obtaining promises from investors not to finance it or its competitors. In October, the Financial Times reported that OpenAI demanded investors in its latest funding round to also refrain from financing any of OpenAI’s rivals, including xAI.

Musk’s petition also alleges that Microsoft and OpenAI continue to illegally share proprietary information and resources, and that several of the defendants, including Altman, are conducting business on their own that harms competition in the market.

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In a statement sent by email, a spokesperson for OpenAI said: “Elon’s fourth attempt, which once again recycles the same unfounded complaints, remains completely without merit.” The company had already tried to dismiss Musk’s lawsuit, calling it “bluster” and unfounded. We’ll see how all this ends now that Elon Musk is Donald Trump’s right-hand man.