Musk escalates dispute with Sam Altman over OpenAI: What you should know

Topline

Elon Musk asked a federal court to stop ChatGPT parent company OpenAI from allegedly banning its investors from supporting competitors like Musk’s xAI – escalating the feud between the world’s richest person and his former business partner, OpenAI’s Sam Altman. represents.

Elon Musk listens as President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a Republican conference in the House of Representatives … (+) Meeting at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill on November 13, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Allison Robbert-Pool/Getty Images)

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Important facts

Musk’s attorney, Marc Toberoff, filed a motion in federal court on Friday for a preliminary injunction that essentially seeks to block OpenAI from implementing a reported plan to transition from a nonprofit to a for-profit company.

The filing alleges that OpenAI and its partner Microsoft attempted to monopolize the industry by “denying competitors access to investment capital (group boycott)” and “sharing ill-gotten competitive information or coordination through the board ties between Microsoft and OpenAI.”

Musk – originally co-chairman of OpenAI when the company was incorporated as a nonprofit corporation in December 2015 – filed his first lawsuit against OpenAI in California state court in early 2024, claiming that Altman and his executives “breached the incorporation agreement” when they filed a lawsuit against the company’s -for-profit subsidiary with funding from Microsoft, causing it to “radically deviate from its original mission.”

The billionaire withdrew the suit in state court, but later sued Altman, OpenAI and others in federal court on similar grounds, claiming: “Musk and the nonprofit’s eponymous target were betrayed by Altman and his accomplices.”

The lawsuit accuses OpenAI and its partners of violating federal anti-illegal crime laws. It also claims that the company originally vowed to share its technology with the public for the benefit of humanity, but has since decided to keep this secret.

Microsoft declined to comment to CNBC on the injunction, and an OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement to the broadcaster that the request “recycles the same baseless complaints” and “remains completely without merit.”

Cons

Altman and other OpenAI executives argue that Musk was initially in favor of turning the company into a for-profit entity, they wrote in a blog post responding to the first lawsuit, claiming that Musk wanted to merge OpenAI with Tesla when he left the board in 2018 They also included emails between company executives and Musk, including one in which Musk agreed that “it’s perfectly fine not to share the science behind their AI model” to prevent it from being used by bad actors.

Important background

Altman, who rose to fame in Silicon Valley as head of startup accelerator YCombinator, was a protégé of sorts for Musk before the relationship developed into an AI rivalry. Altman acknowledged Musk’s influence in a 2019 blog post, describing Musk’s “certainty. . . When he talked about sending big rockets to Mars” during a tour Musk gave Altman of his SpaceX rocket facility, it was a pivotal moment for him and he wrote that he thought “that’s the measure of how convincing looks like,” according to The Guardian. The tech moguls’ feud over OpenAI – best known for its generative chatbot ChatGPT – came to light after Musk left the company in 2018, with Musk frequently attacking Altman on social media. Musk unveiled xAI, a rival AI company whose Grok chatbot is integrated into Musk’s social platform X, in July 2023. Musk attacked OpenAI over its multibillion-dollar partnership with Microsoft, while OpenAI argued that Musk “founded a competitor and then sued us. Without him, we have begun to make significant progress on OpenAI’s mission.”

Forbes rating

We estimate Musk’s net worth at $330.1 billion, making him the richest person in the world.

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