Elon Musk Intensifies Legal Battle Against OpenAI, Includes Microsoft in the Lawsuit
Elon Musk has taken a significant step in escalating his legal battle against OpenAI. He has filed an amended complaint that now includes Microsoft, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and former OpenAI board member Dee Templeton as defendants. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Oakland, California, also introduces new plaintiffs such as Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis and Musk’s AI company, xAI.
The updated filing accuses OpenAI of deviating from its nonprofit mission. It alleges that the company now holds a monopoly, with an estimated 70% share of the generative AI market. Musk contends that OpenAI is “actively trying to eliminate competitors” like xAI by “extracting promises from investors not to fund them.” The lawsuit also suggests a ‘de facto merger’ between OpenAI and Microsoft, asserting that xAI has suffered due to its inability to obtain compute resources from Microsoft on terms comparable to OpenAI.
Microsoft, having invested $13 billion in OpenAI, effectively holds a 49% stake in the company’s earnings. The tech giant provides extensive cloud hardware resources that OpenAI utilizes to train and run AI models like ChatGPT. The complaint challenges what it describes as ‘interlocking directorates’ that could potentially facilitate anti-competitive coordination between the companies.
Source: TechCrunch