Elon Musk sues OpenAI, Sam Altman again

Weeks after dropping a lawsuit against the artificial intelligence startup he co-founded in 2015, billionaire Elon Musk has filed another lawsuit against OpenAI and its executives.

The new lawsuit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Northern California, revives Musk’s claims from an earlier lawsuit that the company and two of its co-founders, current CEO Sam Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman, violated the company’s founding mission of open-source development. General artificial intelligence The company develops AGI (artificial general intelligence) technology for the benefit of humanity, and Musk stepped down from the company’s board of directors in 2018 because he felt the company was lagging behind Google in the AI ​​race.

“Despite Musk lending his name to this venture, investing significant time and tens of millions of dollars in seed capital, and recruiting some of the top AI scientists to OpenAI, Musk and the nonprofit’s eponymous causes have been betrayed by Altman and his co-defendants,” the latest complaint reads.

As OpenAI’s technology began to transform generative artificial intelligence, Altman argues, “it flipped the narrative and started making money.”

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OpenAI did not immediately respond to FOX Business’ request for comment.

The lawsuit seeks a judicial ruling that OpenAI’s license to Microsoft to use its AI models is invalid. Musk also claims that OpenAI’s language models are outside the scope of the company’s partnership with Microsoft.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (right) speaks as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (right) looks on during the OpenAI DevDay event in San Francisco on November 6, 2023. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

OpenAI has a licensing partnership with Microsoft, which has seen the tech giant invest billions of dollars in the startup in return for using its large-scale language models for its computing services.

In June, Musk dropped a lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman, accusing them of abandoning the startup’s original mission of developing artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity, rather than for profit.

Musk’s lawyers had asked a California court to dismiss the lawsuit, which was originally filed in February, without giving reasons.

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In the lawsuit filed in February, Musk said OpenAI’s three founders had originally agreed to work on AI in a way that would “benefit humanity.”

OpenAI executives responded to the now-withdrawn lawsuit with a blog post detailing the company’s history with Musk.

“We reject all of Elon’s claims,” ​​Altman, Brockman and co-founder Ilya Sutskever wrote in March.

Sam Altman, left, and the company’s co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever speak together at Tel Aviv University in Tel Aviv on June 5, 2023. (Jack Guess/AFP/via Getty Images)

They also shared their interactions with Musk regarding OpenAI’s structure during that period, revealing that Musk had floated ideas such as: OpenAI and Tesla IntegrationAt the same time, he also sought to become the company’s CEO and gain majority control of its shares and board of directors.

They added that they regretted their falling out with Musk given his recent success. Launch of ChatGPT His move to start a rival AI company later in 2023.

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Last year, Musk announced a new AI company called xAI, with a chatbot called Grok that he touted as a rival to OpenAI.

In May, xAI announced it had raised $6 billion in funding. Series B Funding The company said investors in the investment included Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and Kingdom Holding.

FOX Business’ Eric Revell and Reuters contributed to this report.