Elon Musk has reopened a lawsuit against Sam Altman in federal court, claiming that the CEO of Tesla was tricked into co-founding OpenAI, according to a court document released on Monday.
TakeAway Points:
- Elon Musk filed a federal lawsuit against Sam Altman, alleging that the Tesla boss was “manipulated” into co-founding OpenAI.
- Musk says that he invested in OpenAI with the understanding that it would operate as a charity, but that after a while, Microsoft, Altman, and other others “created an opaque web of for-profit OpenAI affiliates, engaging in rampant self-dealing.”
- The allegations in the latest case are comparable to those in another lawsuit that Musk launched this year in California against Altman and OpenAI; the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla eventually withdrew the suit.
Elon Musk has revived a lawsuit against Sam Altman
The crux of Musk’s claims center around his view that he was “courted and deceived” by Altman and current OpenAI President Greg Brockman into co-founding the artificial intelligence firm on the basis that it was a nonprofit.
After Musk came on board and invested millions of dollars, the lawsuit claims he was “betrayed by Altman and his accomplices” as they, along with Microsoft, “established an opaque web of for-profit OpenAI affiliates, engaged in rampant self-dealing.”
“The perfidy and deceit are of Shakespearean proportions,” the lawsuit alleges.
Previous Lawsuit against OpenAI
The claims in the new lawsuit are similar to another lawsuit filed by Musk against OpenAI and Altman in California this year, which the Tesla and SpaceX boss ultimately dropped.
Musk has been very vocal over the past few years about his fear of artificial intelligence and the dangers it poses to humanity. Musk states in the latest lawsuit, filed in a district court in Northern California, that he was “manipulated” into co-founding OpenAI by Altman and Brockman, who allegedly promised “that it would chart a safer, more open course than profit-driven tech giants.”
“Altman assured Musk that the non-profit structure guaranteed neutrality and a focus on safety and openness for the benefit of humanity, not shareholder value. But as it turns out, this was all hot-air philanthropy—the hook for Altman’s long con,” the lawsuit claims.
Microsoft, entangled in the lawsuit
Meanwhile, the lawsuit also alleges that Microsoft was involved in the situation.
Identifying OpenAI as a nonprofit with no shareholders, the lawsuit states that Microsoft “sought to obtain leverage in other ways by, for example, enticing OpenAI, Inc. to use and become inextricably dependent on Microsoft’s cloud computing system.”
“While Musk expressed a liking for Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, the values of the company and OpenAI, Inc. did not align,” the lawsuit claims.
Microsoft is the biggest investor in OpenAI and has poured a reported $13 billion into the company.
“Over the course of the next few years and continuing to today, Microsoft methodically entrenched itself further into OpenAI,” the lawsuit alleges.
Last month, Microsoft Corp. relinquished its observer seat on OpenAI’s board amid increasing scrutiny from global antitrust regulators over Big Tech’s influence in artificial intelligence. The US software giant, which has invested $13 billion in OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, announced its withdrawal through a letter to OpenAI.
