Elon Musk fired back at OpenAI’s accusation that he’s been waging a “relentless” campaign for more than a year to damage the startup.
In a court filing late Wednesday, an attorney for the world’s richest person asked a judge to brush aside allegations that he has weaponized legal claims, social media posts and attacks in the press to try to sabotage OpenAI’s success – all to gain advantage for his own generative artificial intelligence startup, xAI.
Musk’s latest filing comes just days after OpenAI retreated from its plan to restructure as a for-profit business – which Musk, as well as some former employees and academics, have alleged would be an improper pivot from the startup’s roots as a nonprofit charity.
Instead, the ChatGPT maker said Monday it would move forward with an effort to overhaul its for-profit division as a public benefit corporation, but the overall business will remain under the control of its nonprofit.
Even though the new plan would effectively maintain the contours of how OpenAI is currently set up, Musk’s lawyer, Marc Toberoff, said the proposal “changes nothing,” a sign the billionaire may continue with his legal crusade against the startup led by Sam Altman.
“OpenAI’s counterclaims not only fail as a matter of law, they confirm OpenAI’s betrayal of its charitable mission, and the public at large,” Toberoff wrote in the filing. “The nonprofit is nothing more than an inconvenience standing in the way of Altman’s profit-driven ambitions.”
The legal wrangling between Musk and Altman, who worked together to launch OpenAI a decade ago, is playing out as the startup is in talks with officials in Delaware and California over its restructuring plans.
In the court fight Musk launched last year, he accused OpenAI of walking back on its founding purpose as a charity when it accepted billions of dollars in funding from Microsoft Corp. starting in 2019, the year after he left OpenAI’s board. Musk launched rival xAI in 2023.
Altman and OpenAI filed a countersuit in early April, claiming Musk is trying to hurt the ChatGPT maker and damage its relationships with investors and customers. “Musk has tried every tool available to harm OpenAI,” the startup’s lawyers said in the countersuit.
A federal judge in Oakland, California, has set a March trial in Musk’s challenge to Altman’s restructuring plans, setting the stage for a high-stakes courtroom clash between the two billionaires.
The case is Musk v. Altman, 24-cv-04722, US District Court, Northern District of California (Oakland).