Elon Musk has expanded his lawsuit against ChatGPT maker OpenAI, adding federal antitrust and other claims and adding Microsoft, OpenAI's biggest financial backer, as a defendant.
Musk's amended lawsuit, filed Thursday night in federal court in Oakland, California, alleges that Microsoft and OpenAI illegally sought to monopolize the market for generative artificial intelligence and sideline competitors.
Similar to Musk's original August complaint, the group accused OpenAI and its CEO Samuel Altman of putting profits ahead of the public interest in advancing AI advancements and violating the terms of their contracts.
“Never before in just eight years has a company gone from a tax-exempt charity to a $157 billion for-profit, market-paralyzing gorgon,” the complaint says. It seeks to revoke OpenAI's license with Microsoft and force it to sell its “ill-gotten” profits.
OpenAI said in a statement that the lawsuit is “even more baseless and overreach than previous lawsuits.” Microsoft declined to comment.
“Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior is escalating,” Musk's lawyer Mark Toberoff said in a statement. “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
Musk has long-simmering objections to OpenAI, the startup he co-founded and later became the face of generative AI with billions of dollars in funding from Microsoft.
Musk is attracting new attention as a central figure in Donald Trump's incoming administration. Trump nominated Musk to a new role aimed at cutting government waste after he donated millions of dollars to Trump's Republican campaign.
The expanded lawsuit alleges that OpenAI and Microsoft violated antitrust laws by making investment opportunities conditional on agreements not to do business with rival companies. The company said the exclusive licensing agreement between the two companies amounted to a merger without regulatory approval.
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In a court filing last month, OpenAI accused Musk of pursuing the lawsuit as part of an “increasingly blatant campaign to harass OpenAI for his own competitive advantage.”
