Elon Musk wants a federal court to stop OpenAI from becoming a purely commercial company.
Lawyers representing Musk, his artificial intelligence startup xAI and former OpenAI board member Siobhan Zillis have filed for a preliminary injunction against OpenAI. The injunction could stop OpenAI from requiring its investors to refrain from funding competitors, including xAI and other firms.
The latest lawsuits represent an escalation of the legal feud between Musk, OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, as well as other long-involved backers, including tech investor Reed Hoffman and Microsoft.
Musk originally filed suit against OpenAI in March 2024 in a San Francisco state court, then withdrew his complaint and refiled it a few months later in federal court. Musk's attorneys in the federal suit alleged that OpenAI violated federal racketeering or RICO laws.
In mid-November, they expanded their complaint to include allegations that Microsoft and OpenAI violated antitrust laws when the maker of Chat GPT allegedly asked investors to agree not to invest in rival companies, including Musk's latest startup, xAI. Microsoft declined to comment on the allegations.
In their request for a preliminary injunction, Musk's lawyers argue that OpenAI should be prohibited from "improperly obtaining competitively sensitive information or coordination through the blocking of the Microsoft-OpenAI board," CNN reported.
"Ilon's fourth attempt, recycling the same complaints again, continues to be completely baseless," an OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement.
OpenAI has been one of the biggest startups in recent years- ChatGPT has become a big hit that has helped fuel mainstream corporate enthusiasm for artificial intelligence and related language models. | BGNES
