Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk expanded his lawsuit against ChatGPT maker OpenAI, adding federal antitrust and other claims and adding OpenAI’s largest financial backer Microsoft as a defendant.
Musk’s amended lawsuit, filed on Thursday night in federal court in Oakland, Calif., said Microsoft and OpenAI illegally sought to monopolize the marketplace for generative artificial intelligence and sideline competitors.
Like Musk’s original August criticism, it accused OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, of violating contract provisions by putting profits ahead of the general public good within the push to advance AI.
“Never before has a company gone from tax-exempt charity to a $157 billion for-profit, market-paralyzing gorgon — and in only eight years,” the criticism said. It seeks to void OpenAI’s license with Microsoft and force them to divest “ill-gotten” gains.
OpenAI in a press release said the newest lawsuit “is much more baseless and overreaching than the previous ones.” Microsoft declined to comment
“Microsoft’s anticompetitive practices have escalated,” Musk’s attorney Marc Toberoff said in a press release. “Sunlight is one of the best disinfectant.”
Musk has a long-simmering opposition to OpenAI, a startup he co-founded and that has since grow to be the face of generative AI through billions of dollars in funding from Microsoft.
Musk has gained latest prominence as a key force in President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration. Trump named Musk to a latest role designed to chop government waste, after he donated thousands and thousands of dollars to Trump’s Republican campaign.
The expanded lawsuit said OpenAI and Microsoft violated antitrust law by conditioning investment opportunities on agreements to not cope with the businesses’ rivals. It said the businesses’ exclusive licensing agreement amounted to a merger lacking regulatory approvals.
In a court filing last month, OpenAI accused Musk of pursuing the lawsuit as a part of an “increasingly blusterous campaign to harass OpenAI for his own competitive advantage.”
