Elon Musk has broadened his lawsuit against OpenAI and is now alleging antitrust violations by both OpenAI and Microsoft.
The amended complaint, filed Thursday, adds Microsoft, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, former OpenAI board member, and current Microsoft VP Dee Templeton as defendants.
Musk’s legal team contends that former OpenAI CEO Sam Altman orchestrated a “de facto merger” between the two companies through “rampant self-dealing,” fostering anti-competitive practices. Microsoft has invested $14 billion in OpenAI since 2019 and holds exclusive commercial licensing rights to OpenAI’s technology, along with a 49% stake in its for-profit arm.
Musk’s lawsuit alleges that OpenAI and Microsoft are stifling competition by sharing sensitive information and discouraging their investors from funding rivals, such as Musk’s xAI. Both companies are vying for investment in the expanding AI sector.
OpenAI secured $6.6 billion in October to develop advanced AI models, while xAI raised $6 billion in March to accelerate its “future technologies” development.
xAI and Shivon Zilis, a former OpenAI board member and executive at Musk’s Neuralink, have joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs. Zilis is also the mother of three of Musk’s children.
Before departing in 2018, Elon Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 with Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, also named defendants in the current lawsuit. Musk previously sued OpenAI in March, later dropping the case in June, alleging the company had strayed from its original mission of developing AI for the benefit of humanity. That lawsuit also claimed OpenAI’s partnership with Microsoft had effectively turned it into a closed-source, profit-driven subsidiary.
Musk’s lawsuit was dropped soon after OpenAI shared internal emails between OpenAI founders and Musk from the past which showed how the Tesla CEO had little to do with founding OpenAI and wanted to turn it into a cash cow for Tesla.
