Elon Musk Sues OpenAI for Allegedly Betraying Founding Mission

One of the most anticipated legal battles in the history of Silicon Valley is now officially underway. On one side is Elon Musk, the richest man on Earth, and is owner of X (formerly Twitter), CEO of Tesla, xAI and SpaceX, among other companies. On the other side is Sam Altman-led OpenAI. At the centre of the lawsuit is a single, deeply contested question: did OpenAI betray the promise it was built on?

Who is the jury

Jury selection in the lawsuit filed by Elon Musk against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman began at the federal courthouse in Oakland, California, with Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers presiding over the proceedings.

Why Musk has filed case against OpenAI and Sam Atlman

Musk's argument is straightforward. When OpenAI was founded in 2015, it was established as a nonprofit with a clear and stated mission: to develop artificial intelligence (AI) safely and for the benefit of all of humanity, not for any single company or set of shareholders. Musk contributed around $38 million to the organisation in its early years, and he says that money was given on the explicit understanding that the technology would remain open-source and serve the public good.

Musk now argues that that promise was broken when he left the company after disagreements, and Sam Altman took Microsoft's money to make the company a for-profit organisation. Moreover, his lawsuit accuses Altman and OpenAI President Greg Brockman of deliberately misleading him by using his well-known fears about the existential dangers of AI to win his financial support, at the same time, secretly planning a very different kind of company.

“Elon Musk's case against Sam Altman and OpenAI is a textbook tale of altruism versus greed. Altman, in concert with other defendants, intentionally courted and deceived Musk, preying on Musk's humanitarian concern about the existential dangers posed by AI,” the lawsuit states.

OpenAI’s partnership with Microsoft

The specific target of Musk's frustration is OpenAI's deepening partnership with Microsoft, which has invested around $13 billion in the company and holds exclusive rights to integrate OpenAI's technology into its products. Musk says that this deal transformed OpenAI from a public-interest research organisation into a profit-driven enterprise.

Musk is seeking approximately $134 billion in compensation, along with the removal of Sam Altman as CEO. Musk has said he does not want the money for himself, saying that he has asked any awarded amount be directed to OpenAI’s nonprofit arm rather than to him personally.

OpenAI fires back

OpenAI has denied every allegation in the lawsuit. The company says it remains fully committed to its founding mission of creating artificial general intelligence (AGI) that benefits humanity, and that its commercial partnerships, including the one with Microsoft.

OpenAI argues that building and running the world's most advanced AI systems is expensive. OpenAI has also attacked Musk, alleging that Musk did not leave the company out of principle, he left because he did not get what he wanted. According to OpenAI, Musk demanded full control of the organisation back in 2018, and when co-founders Altman, Brockman, and Ilya Sutskever refused to hand it to him, he walked away.

In a blog post, OpenAI went further, claiming that Musk had at one point wanted to merge OpenAI into Tesla. “When we wouldn't agree to his terms, he walked away and told us we had a '0% chance' of success. He turned out to be wrong, though, and a resentful Elon has attacked OpenAI ever since,” the post reads.

“Elon donated $38 million to the OpenAI nonprofit, which was spent exactly as intended and in service of the mission. Despite claiming and receiving a tax deduction for this donation, he's now asking the court to treat it as an investment that entitles him to significant ownership of OpenAI,” the blog post states.