“Mr. Musk’s lawsuit continues to be baseless and a part of his ongoing pattern of harassment, and we look forward to demonstrating this at trial,” OpenAI said in a statement.
A federal judge has given Elon Musk permission to continue his lawsuit against OpenAI.
Musk, the owner of Tesla and the world’s richest man, played a key role in founding the artificial intelligence company. However, Musk now claims that OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, ran afoul of contractual provisions by embracing a profit-centric model.
According to The Guardian, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez indicated that there is ample evidence to suggest that OpenAI’s leaders made repeated statements indicating that the organization would retain a not-for-profit structure. Furthermore, Gonzalez said there enough disputed facts to justify taking the case to trial and putting it before a jury.
Musk is asking the court to award unspecified damages to compensate OpenAI’s “ill-gotten gains,” but OpenAI has pushed back, characterizing the lawsuit as baseless.
“Mr. Musk’s lawsuit continues to be baseless and a part of his ongoing pattern of harassment, and we look forward to demonstrating this at trial,” OpenAI said in a statement.
Musk, adds The Guardian, claims to have contributed at least $38 million to OpenAI, a figure that represents about 60% of its early funding. Attorneys for Musk say that the billionaire’s contributions were predicated on promises that OpenAI would remain a research-oriented nonprofit. By moving to a profit-centered model, Musk argues, OpenAI intentionally breached its “founding agreement” to create artificial intelligence tools for the betterment of humanity.
“After Musk lent his name to the venture, invested significant time, tens of millions of dollars in seed capital and recruited top AI scientists for OpenAI Inc, Musk and the non-profit’s namesake objective were betrayed by [Sam] Altman and his accomplices,” the lawsuit alleges.
OpenAI, in contrast, has repeatedly alleged that Musk is only suing to preserve his own market interest.
In 2023, years after making his initial contributions to OpenAI, Musk founded xAI, a co-defendant in the lawsuit best known for its development of the “Grok” chatbot. Grok, like other large language models (LLMs), is in direction competition with OpenAI’s best-known product, ChatGPT.
OpenAI’s executives have also released emails purportedly sent by Musk, in which he encouraged the company to monetize and abandon its not-for-profit structure.
“We’re sad that it’s come to this with someone whom we’ve deeply admired,” OpenAI wrote in a 2024 blog post. “As we said about Elon’s initial filing, which was subsequently withdrawn, Elon’s prior emails continue to speak for themselves.”
OpenAI has since described Musk as “a frustrated commercial competitor seeking to slow down a mission-driven market leader.”
In light of Gonzalez’s ruling, Steven Molo, a lead trial attorney representing Musk and xAI, said that his clients look forward t trial.
“We look forward to presenting all the evidence of the defendants’ wrongdoing to the jury,” Molo said.
Sources
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Musk lawsuit over OpenAI for-profit conversion can head to trial, US judge says
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