[ad_1]
Elon Musk’s lawsuit was filed against OpenAI, accusing the company of abandoning its non-profit mission It was withdrawn In July, just to be alive In August. Now, in Amended complaintThe lawsuit names new defendants including Microsoft, LinkedIn co-founder Reed Hoffman, and former OpenAI board member and Microsoft vice president Dee Templeton.
The amended filing also adds new plaintiffs: Neuralink exec and former OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis and Musk’s AI company, xAI.
Musk was one of the original founders of OpenAI, which was supposed to research and develop artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity, and was originally founded as a non-profit. He left the company in 2018 after disagreements over its direction.
In the complaint, Musk’s lawyers say that OpenAI is now “actively trying to eliminate competitors” like xAI by “extracting promises from investors.” Not to fund themIt is also alleged to be taking unfair advantage of Microsoft’s infrastructure and expertise in what Musk’s lawyer described in the filing as a “de facto” merger.
“xAI has been harmed by, but not limited to, … the inability to license OpenAI technology due to an exclusive license to Microsoft … the inability to obtain compute from Microsoft on terms as close as possible to what OpenAI receives … and the exclusivity between OpenAI and Microsoft for competitively sensitive information.”
The complaint alleges that Hoffman’s position on the boards of both Microsoft and OpenAI, while also being a partner in the investment firm Greylock, gave Hoffman privileged — and illicit — insight into the companies’ dealings. (Hoffman stepped down from OpenAI’s board in 2023.) Greylock invested in Inflection, Musk’s lawyer notes, an AI startup that Microsoft acquired earlier this year — and which could be considered a competitor to OpenAI, according to the complaint.
As for Templeton, who was briefly appointed by Microsoft as a non-voting observer on OpenAI’s board, the amended filing alleges that she was in a position to facilitate agreements between Microsoft and OpenAI that would violate antitrust rules.
“The purpose of the ban on interlocking directorates is to prevent the sharing of competitively sensitive information in violation of antitrust laws and/or to provide a forum for the coordination of other anti-competitive activities,” the complaint said. “Allowing Templeton and Hoffman to serve as members of OpenAI’s… Board undermined that purpose.”
According to the amended complaint, Zilis, who resigned from OpenAI’s board in 2023 after serving as a member for approximately four years, is considered an “injured employee” under California corporate law. Zilis repeatedly raised concerns about OpenAI dealmaking internally that fell on deaf ears — concerns broadly similar to Musk’s, according to the complaint.
Zelis has close ties to Musk, having worked as a project manager at Tesla from 2017 to 2019 in addition to directing Neuralink’s research. (Neuralink is Musk’s brain-computer interface project.) She is also the mother of three of Musk’s children, Techno Mechanicus and twins Strider and Azure.
The 107-page amended complaint includes the extraordinary detail that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman suggested that OpenAI sell its own cryptocurrency in September 2017, before ultimately deciding to move to a capped-profit structure. Musk supposedly shot down the idea of selling cryptocurrencies.
The thrust of the plaintiffs’ lawsuit remains the same: OpenAI benefited from Musk’s early involvement in the company, but backed away from the nonprofit’s pledge to make the fruits of its AI research available to everyone. “No amount of clever drafting or over-the-top creative deal-making can obscure what is happening here,” the complaint reads. “OpenAI, which Musk co-founded as an independent charity committed to safety and transparency… (is quickly becoming a fully for-profit subsidiary of Microsoft.)
OpenAI has sought to dismiss Musk’s lawsuit, calling it “noisy” and baseless.
[ad_2]