Elon Musk asks court to stop OpenAI from becoming a for-profit

Elon Musk’s attorneys filed for an injunction against OpenAI and Microsoft on Friday accusing the two of anticompetitive practices and seeking to stop OpenAI’s conversion to a for-profit company. The filing, spotted by TechCrunch, also names OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Microsoft’s Dee Templeton and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman as defendants. Musk first sued OpenAI earlier this year for allegedly violating its founding mission of building AI “for the benefit of humanity,” but withdrew the lawsuit a few months later. He then filed another lawsuit against OpenAI in a California federal court in August, and recently added Microsoft as a defendant.

The new motion accuses OpenAI and Microsoft of telling investors not to fund OpenAI’s competitors, such as Musk’s xAI, of “benefitting from wrongfully obtained competitively sensitive information or coordination” through its relationship with Microsoft, and other alleged antitrust violations. “OpenAI’s path from a non-profit to for-profit behemoth is replete with per se anticompetitive practices, flagrant breaches of its charitable mission, and rampant selfdealing,” it states. “Allowing this course of conduct to continue until final disposition will seriously harm Plaintiffs and the public at large.”

It comes a few months after it was reported that OpenAI is making the switch to a for-profit model. In statement shared with Engadget in response to Musk’s latest filing, an OpenAI spokesperson said, “Elon’s fourth attempt, which again recycles the same baseless complaints, continues to be utterly without merit.”