Elon Musk filed a lawsuit late on Thursday accusing OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman of “breach of contract” for violating the company’s founding agreement to benefit humanity rather than pursue profits.
According to the suit filed with the Superior Court of San Francisco County, when Musk helped to bankroll the artificial intelligence startup in 2015, he reached an agreement with Altman, company president Greg Brockman, and other co-founders that OpenAI would be run as an open-source nonprofit. The company’s AI breakthroughs—which thus far have included large language model ChatGPT and forthcoming video generator Sora—were intended only to be used “for the benefit of humanity.”
While Musk left the OpenAI board in 2018, he claims to have been repeatedly assured that this foundational mission was still in place. However, in the court documents filed on Thursday, the Tesla founder alleges that OpenAI’s close relationship with Microsoft has “set the Founding Agreement aflame.”
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“These events of 2023 constitute flagrant breaches of the Founding Agreement, which Defendants have essentially turned on its head. To this day, OpenAI, Inc.’s website continues to profess that its charter is to ensure that AGI [artificial general intelligence technology] ‘benefits all of humanity,’” the lawsuit reads. “In reality, however, OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft. Under its new Board, it is not just developing but is actually refining an AGI to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity.”
Musk requests a court injunction to stop anyone—Altman, Brockman, and Microsoft executives included—from profiting from the startup’s AI innovations.
Leadership of OpenAI became a source of internal tension last year when the board unexpectedly fired Altman after a no-confidence vote. While Altman initially accepted a job at Microsoft’s AI research unit, he was reappointed as CEO less than a week after his departure when other high-ranking employees threatened to quit. Most of the board members were replaced upon Altman’s return.
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In his lawsuit, Musk claims that this entire fiasco was engineered by Altman and Microsoft to remove the board’s original members and undermine the founding agreement, allowing the company to adopt a new profit model. Per the filing:
Mr. Altman hand-picked a new Board that lacks similar technical expertise or any substantial background in AI governance, which the previous board had by design…The new Board consisted of members with more experience in profit-centric enterprises or politics than in AI ethics and governance. They were also reportedly ‘big fans of Altman.’
The lawsuit goes on to accuse OpenAI of violating its fiduciary duty and engaging in unfair business practices, demanding that the company revert to its original open-source model.
The full lawsuit can be read below:
Elon-Musk-Sues-OpenAI-Sam-AltmanDownload
Connor Walcott is a staff writer for Valuetainment.com. Follow Connor on X and look for him on VT’s “The Unusual Suspects.”
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