Elon Musk files new lawsuit against OpenAI, Sam Altman

Elon Musk filed a new lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman on Monday, reviving a previous legal effort against the massive artificial intelligence (AI) company he helped found.

The new federal suit claims Altman and fellow co-founder Greg Brockman breached the company’s founding mission, and “assiduously manipulated Musk into co-founding their spurious non-profit venture” by promising it would create safe and transparent AI technology while actually doing the opposite.

Musk’s attorneys claimed Altman ran a “long con” on the tech billionaire in the suit, describing “perfidy and deceit” of “Shakespearean proportions.”

Those echo Musk’s claims in the previous lawsuit against the company, dropped in June without explanation.

Musk’s attorney Marc Toberoff told The New York Times this second attempt is “a much more forceful lawsuit,” alleging that OpenAI broke federal racketeering laws in an attempt to defraud Musk when he left the company in 2018.

The suit also challenges Microsoft’s massive investment in the firm’s for-profit subsidiary, claiming its deal with the tech giant also goes against the company’s founding mission by barring it from making its technology open source.

OpenAI has previously brushed off Musk’s allegations, pointing to company emails from shortly before Musk left the company in 2018, where he argues that it should become a commercial subsidiary of Tesla. 

Executives at OpenAI said in an internal memo when the first suit was filed that the claims may have been sparked by a jealousy for missing out on the company’s recent success.

Musk now owns a separate AI company called xAI, alongside his ventures as the leader of the social platform X, Tesla and space firm SpaceX.