Elon Musk files for injunction to halt OpenAI’s transition to a for-profit

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Attorneys for tech billionaire Elon Musk have filed for a preliminary injunction against OpenAI, several of its co-founders, and its investor and close collaborator, Microsoft, to prevent OpenAI and other named defendants from engaging in what Musk’s counsel claims is anticompetitive behavior.

The motion for an injunction, which was filed late on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accuses OpenAI, its CEO Sam Altman, President Greg Brockman, Microsoft, LinkedIn co-founder and former OpenAI board member Reid Hoffman, and former OpenAI board member and Microsoft VP Dee Templeton of various illicit activities — and seeks to halt them. The allegations include:

Discouraging investors from backing OpenAI rivals like Musk’s own AI company, xAI. Benefitting from “wrongfully obtained competitively sensitive information” through OpenAI’s connections with Microsoft. Converting OpenAI’s governance structure to a for-profit and “transferring any material assets, including intellectual property owned, held, or controlled by OpenAI, Inc., its subsidiaries, or affiliates.” Causing OpenAI to do business with organizations in which any defendant has a “material financial interest.”

Attorneys for Musk assert that “irreparable harm” will ensue if the injunction isn’t granted.

“Plaintiffs and the public need a pause,” they wrote in the filing. “An injunction to preserve what is left of OpenAI’s nonprofit character, free from self-dealing, is the only appropriate remedy. If not, the OpenAI promised to Musk and the public will be long gone by the time the court reaches the merits.”

The motion is the latest salvo in Musk’s legal battle with OpenAI, which at its core accuses the company of abandoning its original nonprofit mission to make the fruits of its AI research available to all. Musk withdrew the suit in July, only to revive it late this summer. An amended complaint earlier this month named new defendants including Microsoft, Hoffman, and Templeton, and two new plaintiffs: Shivon Zilis, a Neuralink exec and ex-OpenAI board member, and xAI.

Musk has argued in previous complaints that he’s been defrauded out of more than $44 million he says he donated to OpenAI by preying on his “well-known concerns about the existential harms” of AI. Musk, one of OpenAI’s co-founders, left the company in 2018 over disagreements about its direction.

OpenAI launched in 2015 as a nonprofit, and in 2019, converted into a “capped-profit” in … Read More