Elon Musk sued OpenAI earlier this year, claiming the company violated its founding agreement and is working to maximize profits for Microsoft instead of humanity as a whole.
Although Musk withdrew the lawsuit in June, he later resurrected it in August — and now he's expanding the complaint to include Microsoft, LinkedIn co-founder and Microsoft board member Reid Hoffman, and Microsoft vice president of partnerships and operations Deannah Templeton as defendants. They join original defendants OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman and its president Greg Brockman.
of 107 page complaint was filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
In it, Musk accuses OpenAI of going from a “tax-exempt charity” to a “for-profit, market-crippling gorgon.”
Elon Musk. Photo Credit: Allison Robbert/AFP/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Musk alleges in the complaint that he “fed” OpenAI “in its infancy” with his “money, advice, efforts and recruiting connections.”
Musk says he played a role in OpenAI's origin story by recruiting key executives, including former chief scientist Ilya Sutskeverand putting more than $44 million in cash behind the company. Musk has been involved with OpenAI since its founding in December 2015 resignation from the board in February 2018.
Related: Elon Musk Sues ChatGPT-Maker OpenAI
“It is fair to say that without Musk's involvement, support and substantial efforts, OpenAI would not have existed,” the lawsuit states. OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022 in a move that started the AI boom. ChatGPT had more than 200 million weekly users since August and was valid 157 billion dollars since October.
The complaint accuses OpenAI of now being transformed into a profit-making arm of Microsoft and actively trying to eliminate competitors like Musk's xAI, making investors promise not to fund them. xAI raised $6 billion in May and is in talks with raise $6 billion more.
Musk is bringing this legal action against OpenAI to “strip the defendants of their ill-gotten gains and ensure that OpenAI maintains its mission of developing secure and open AI for the public good.”
The updated lawsuit adds xAI as a plaintiff, along with Shivon Zilis, who is an executive on Musk's Neuralinkor former OpenAI board memberAND mother of three children of Musk's twelve children. Musk is still listed as a plaintiff as well.
Musk is the richest person in the world at the time of writing, with a net worth of $307 billion.