Elon Musk on Monday filed a new lawsuit against OpenAI, its CEO Sam Altman, and president Greg Brockman, arguing they betrayed the company's founding mission to create safe, open-source AI technology to benefit humanity. The suit calls the case a "textbook tale of altruism versus greed." The new complaint was filed in Northern California federal court nearly two months after Musk abruptly withdrew a similar lawsuit without explanation.
According to the new complaint, Altman and Brockman "intentionally courted and deceived Musk, preying on Musk's humanitarian concern about the existential dangers posed by artificial intelligence."
Musk co-founded Chat-GPT-maker OpenAI in 2015, investing what he says was "significant time" and "tens of millions of dollars in seed capital" into the company. The lawsuit claims Altman and Brockman "flipped the narrative and proceeded to cash in" by transforming from a non-profit to a mostly for-profit enterprise by seeking a multibillion-dollar partnership with Microsoft. Musk left OpenAI in 2018, citing an internal power struggle.
Musk's attorney says the new lawsuit is "much more forceful" and "holds defendants accountable for intentional misrepresentations to Musk and the public."
OpenAI called Musk's original claim meritless and referenced company emails showing that the Tesla founder had tried to turn OpenAI into a commercial operation before leaving the company in 2018.
Musk's company xAI developed Grok chatbot for X in 2023, making it open source earlier this year. On Monday, officials from five U.S. states called on Musk to fix the chatbot, claiming it had spread misinformation about the 2024 election.