Elon Musk Expands OpenAI Lawsuit, Adds Microsoft as Defendant and Antitrust Allegations
Elon Musk expanded his lawsuit against OpenAI, adding federal antitrust and other claims, and adding Microsoft as a defendant.
Elon Musk’s lawsuit, filed on November 15 in federal court in Oakland, (California, USA), alleges that Microsoft and OpenAI attempted to illicit monopolize the generative artificial intelligence (AI generation) market and eliminate competitors.
Like Elon Musk’s original complaint in August, the new lawsuit accuses OpenAI and CEO Samuel Altman of violating contract terms by putting profits above the public interest in their efforts to advance AI.
“No company has ever gone from a tax-exempt nonprofit to a $157 billion, market-crippling for-profit giant in just eight years,” the lawsuit states.
“Microsoft’s unfair competitive practices have escalated.
Elon Musk has long criticized OpenAI, the startup he co-founded and has now become the face of generative AI thanks to Microsoft investing at least $13 billion.
Elon Musk is emerging as a major figure in the upcoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump.
On November 12, President-elect Donald Trump nominated Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy (former Republican US presidential candidate) to lead the newly created Department of Government Effectiveness (DOGE).
“I am very pleased to announce that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead the Department of Government Effectiveness (DOGE),” said Mr.
Mr.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are two prominent supporters from the private sector of Mr.
Immediately after Mr.
For his part, Vivek Ramaswamy declared: “We will not give up easily.”
Vivek Ramaswamy is a biotech entrepreneur.
Previously, Elon Musk confirmed that he could quickly cut $2 trillion in government spending if Mr.
Elon Musk has never worked in the US government apparatus until now.
Elon Musk’s sprawling lawsuit accuses OpenAI and Microsoft of violating antitrust laws by tying investment opportunities in them to non-cooperation agreements with other competitors.
OpenAI said in a statement that Elon Musk’s latest lawsuit is “even more baseless and outrageous than previous lawsuits.”
In an October court filing, OpenAI accuses Elon Musk of pursuing the lawsuit as part of an “increasingly aggressive campaign to harass OpenAI for its own competitive advantage,” the jury asked a federal judge in Oakland (California, US
“OpenAI is committed to developing artificial general intelligence (AGI) safely and profitably.
AGI is a form of AI capable of flexibly understanding, learning and performing diverse tasks, like humans.
In June, Elon Musk withdrew a similar lawsuit filed in a state court in California (USA), claiming that OpenAI’s relationship with Microsoft caused the startup to deviate from its mission of responsible AI development.
In a lawsuit filed in August, Elon Musk’s attorney Sam Altman accused him of intentionally seducing and defrauding the billionaire, who has raised concerns about threats from AI.
Elon Musk founded xAI in 2023 to compete with OpenAI.
The world’s billionaire billionaire is fighting accusations in a lawsuit in the state of Delaware (USA) that xAI is draining human resources and resources at Tesla, one of his other companies, causing harm to its shareholders.
In October, Elon Musk called OpenAI and Sam Altman “angry” for allegedly asking investors not to back their AI competitors, including xAI, after the most recent funding round worth 6.6 billion USD.
When global investors invested 6.6 billion USD, OpenAI asked them to make a commitment that went beyond just providing capital.
In that list of 5 companies, there are 3 competitors developing major language models: Elon Musk’s xAI, Anthropic and Safe Superintelligence (the newly founded company of Ilya Sutskever, former chief scientific officer and co-founder of OpenAI).
Anthropic, xAI and Safe Superintelligence are racing OpenAI to build large language models, which require billions of dollars in funding.
The remaining two names are two AI application companies, including AI search startup Perplexity and enterprise search firm Glean.
Perplexity and Glean were mentioned in OpenAI’s chat with investors, suggesting that ChatGPT plans to sell more products to businesses and end users as it predicts ambitious growth revenue to 11.6 billion USD in 2025 from 3.7 billion USD in 2024.
Recently, Sam Altman (OpenAI CEO) said he was “very grateful” to Elon Musk for sponsoring OpenAI in the early days despite their current strained relationship.
Sam Altman admits that tackling OpenAI’s financing problem from the ground up, with money from previous projects, was “very helpful” in getting the company off the ground, because otherwise it would have been difficult to find other investors.
In an interview with Garry Tan (chairman and CEO of Y Combinator), Sam Altman compares the AI boom to other turning points in technology, including the rise of mobile devices, the birth of the Internet, and the semiconductor revolution.
“With each successive major technological revolution, you could do more than before,” said the 39-year-old American businessman.
Y Combinator is a well-known start-up incubator in Silicon Valley (USA).
Sam Altman said the time is ripe for founders because AI is “developing much faster than people appreciate today.”
“Bet on the AI trend. We’re nowhere near the saturation point,” said Sam Altman.
It comes as OpenAI transitions to a for-profit corporate structure after operating as a nonprofit for nearly a decade, including preliminary discussions with the California attorney general’s office.
Additionally, Sam Altman warns that while AI may bring “short-term growth spurts,” it does not automatically bring success to startups.
In the future, Sam Altman says he can envision a world where a company makes billions of dollars and has fewer than 100 employees.
“I don’t know what to make of it other than it’s a great time to be a startup founder,” he said.
