Musk’s amended lawsuit against OpenAI names Microsoft as a defendant

Elon Musk’s lawsuit was filed against OpenAI, accusing the corporate of abandoning its non-profit mission withdrawn in July, simply to be there reborn in August. Now in corrected criticismthe lawsuit names recent defendants, including Microsoft, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and former OpenAI board member and Microsoft vice chairman Dee Templeton.

The amended filing also adds recent plaintiffs: Neuralink executive and former OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis and Musk’s AI company, xAI.

Musk was considered one of the unique founders of OpenAI, which was tasked with researching and developing artificial intelligence for the advantage of humanity, and was originally founded as a nonprofit organization. He left the corporate in 2018 after disagreements over its direction.

In the criticism, Musk’s lawyers argue that OpenAI is “actively trying to eliminate competitors” like xAI by “extracting guarantees from investors to not finance them” He also allegedly unfairly advantages from Microsoft’s infrastructure and expertise in what Musk’s lawyer describes within the lawsuit as a “de facto merger.”

“xAI was harmed by, among other things, … the inability to obtain computing power from Microsoft on terms nearly as favorable as OpenAI … and the exclusive exchange between OpenAI and Microsoft of confidential competitive information,” reads the criticism filed late Thursday in a federal court in Oakland, California .

Hoffman’s position on the boards of Microsoft and OpenAI, as well as a partner on the investment firm Greylock, gave Hoffman a privileged – and illegal – view of the businesses’ activities, the criticism alleges. (Hoffman stepped down from OpenAI’s board in 2023.) Greylock invested in Inflection, notes Musk’s general counsel, a man-made intelligence startup that Microsoft acquired earlier this 12 months — and which, in response to the criticism, could reasonably be considered an OpenAI competitor .

As for Templeton, whom Microsoft briefly named a non-voting board observer for OpenAI, the amended filing alleges that she can have facilitated agreements between Microsoft and OpenAI that violated antitrust rules.

“The purpose of the directorate merger prohibition is to prevent the sharing of sensitive competitive information in violation of antitrust laws and/or to provide a forum for coordinating other anticompetitive activities,” the criticism says. “Allowing Templeton and Hoffman to serve as members of OpenAI…. management undermined this goal. “

In addition to Microsoft, Hoffman and Templeton, California Attorney General Rob Bonta was named as a defendant in Musk’s criticism. Bloomberg reported this month, OpenAI is in talks with Bonta’s office in regards to the technique of changing the company structure.

According to the amended criticism, Zilis, who stepped down from OpenAI’s board in 2023 after roughly 4 years as a member, is taken into account an “injured employee” under the California Corporations Code. Zilis has repeatedly raised concerns about OpenAI’s internal dealings which have gone unheeded – which the criticism says are broadly much like Musk’s concerns.

Zilis has close ties to Musk, having worked as a project director at Tesla from 2017 to 2019 and likewise led research on Neuralink. (Neuralink is Musk’s brain-computer interface enterprise.) She can also be the mother of Musk’s three children, Techno Mechanicus, and twins Strider and Azure.

The 107-page amended criticism includes the bizarre detail that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman proposed that OpenAI sell its own cryptocurrency in January 2018 before it ultimately decided to change to a capped-profit structure.

“Please note, I have spoken with part of the security team and there have been many concerns regarding the ICO and possible unintended consequences in the future,” Altman wrote in an email to Musk dated January 21, 2018, in an attachment filed with the amended criticism. could be seen. ICO, or initial coin offering, is an unregulated way of raising funds for cryptocurrency corporations. “I want to emphasize the need for confidentiality, but I think it’s really important that we get buy-in and give people a chance for early assessment.”

Musk allegedly rejected the thought of ​​selling cryptocurrencies. “I have considered an ICO approach and will not support it,” he wrote in an email response to Altman and OpenAI founders Greg Brockman (now OpenAI CEO) and Ilya Sutskever (OpenAI’s former chief scientist), the exhibit shows. “In my opinion, it would just cause a huge loss of credibility for OpenAI and everyone associated with the ICO.”

The essence of the lawsuit stays unchanged on the plaintiffs’ side: OpenAI benefited from Musk’s early involvement in the corporate, and yet it abandoned its nonprofit commitment to make the outcomes of its artificial intelligence research available to all. “No amount of clever design or excess of creative deal-making can overshadow what is happening here,” the criticism reads. “OpenAI, Inc., co-founded by Musk as an independent charity committed to security and transparency… is (rapidly) becoming a wholly-for-profit subsidiary of Microsoft.”

OpenAI sought to dismiss Musk’s lawsuit, calling it “noisy” and baseless.