Elon Musk names Microsoft as defendant in amended lawsuit against OpenAI

The amended complaint, filed in a district court in California, also names new plaintiffs — Neuralink executive and ex-OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis and Musk’s AI company, xAI.

“OpenAI, co-founded by Musk as an independent charity committed to safety and transparency — and nurtured in its infancy by Musk’s money, advice, recruiting efforts and connections — is, at the direction of Altman, Brockman, and Microsoft, fast becoming a fully for-profit subsidiary of Microsoft,” the lawsuit read.

Musk’s lawyers argued that OpenAI is “actively trying to eliminate competitors” such as xAI by “extracting promises from investors not to fund them.”

The lawsuit further alleged that “never before has a corporation gone from tax-exempt charity to a $157 billion for-profit, market-paralysing gorgon — and in just eight years”.

“Never before has it happened, because doing so violates almost every principle of law governing economic activity. It requires lying to donors, lying to members, lying to markets, lying to regulators, and lying to the public,” it read.