Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has filed a new lawsuit against OpenAI, the artificial intelligence startup he co-founded in 2015. This latest legal action, initiated in the U.S. District Court of Northern California, comes just weeks after Musk withdrew a previous lawsuit against the company and its top executives, CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman.
Allegations of Mission Betrayal
The new lawsuit revives Musk’s earlier claims that OpenAI and its leadership breached the company’s founding mission. Musk, who invested significant time, tens of millions of dollars in seed capital, and recruited top AI scientists for OpenAI, alleges that the company has strayed from its original goal of developing open-source artificial general intelligence (AGI) technology for the benefit of humanity. According to the complaint, once OpenAI’s technology began to revolutionize generative artificial intelligence, Altman shifted the company’s narrative to capitalize on the technology for profit.
Musk’s departure from the company’s board in 2018 was driven by his belief that OpenAI had fallen behind Google in the AI race. The latest lawsuit contends that OpenAI’s licensing agreement with Microsoft, allowing the tech giant to use its AI models, is outside the scope of their partnership and should be declared null and void.
Previous Lawsuit and Ongoing Dispute
In June, Musk withdrew an earlier lawsuit that accused OpenAI’s leadership of abandoning the startup’s mission to prioritize profits over the original goal of benefiting humanity. That lawsuit, filed in February, claimed that OpenAI’s founders had initially committed to developing AI in a way that would serve humanity’s interests. The withdrawal of the lawsuit did not include a public explanation from Musk’s attorneys.
OpenAI’s response to the February lawsuit included a blog post by Altman, Brockman, and co-founder Ilya Sutskever, who revealed Musk’s past communications with the company. These communications suggested that Musk had proposed merging OpenAI with Tesla and sought to be the CEO with majority control over its equity and board of directors. The executives expressed regret over their falling out with Musk, especially given their recent success with the launch of ChatGPT in late 2023.
OpenAI and Microsoft’s Partnership
OpenAI’s licensing partnership with Microsoft is a significant aspect of the dispute. Under this agreement, Microsoft invests billions of dollars into OpenAI in exchange for access to its large language models, which Microsoft uses for its computing services. Musk’s lawsuit challenges the legitimacy of this partnership, arguing that it deviates from OpenAI’s original mission.
When contacted for comment, an OpenAI spokesperson reiterated their previous statement regarding Musk’s initial legal filing, stating, “Elon’s prior emails continue to speak for themselves.”
