Musk's amended lawsuit against OpenAI names Microsoft as defendant
Elon Musk has filed an amended complaint against OpenAI, accusing the company — and its close partner, Microsoft — of anticompetitive dealings.
Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI accusing the company of abandoning its non-profit mission was withdrawn in July, only to be revived in August. Now, in an amended complaint, the suit names new defendants including Microsoft, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and former OpenAI board member and Microsoft VP Dee Templeton.
The amended filing also adds new plaintiffs: Neuralink exec and ex-OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis and Musk’s AI company, xAI.
Musk was one of the original founders of OpenAI, which was meant to research and develop AI for the benefit of humanity, and was established as a non-profit originally. He left the company in 2018 after disagreements about its direction.
In the complaint, lawyers for Musk argue that OpenAI is now “actively trying to eliminate competitors” such as xAI by “extracting promises from investors not to fund them.” It’s also allegedly unfairly benefitting from Microsoft’s infrastructure and expertise in what Musk’s counsel describes in the filing as a “de facto merger.”
“xAI has been harmed by, without limitation … an inability to obtain compute from Microsoft on terms anywhere near as favorable as OpenAI receives … and the exclusive exchange between OpenAI and Microsoft of competitively sensitive information,” reads the complaint, filed late Thursday in federal court in Oakland, California.
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