Elon Musk stands in high-profile trial against OpenAI

The three were on the initial founding team of OpenAI, with Musk investing up to $38 million early on before the relationship between the founders soured over disagreements over the company’s structure and mission, including whether OpenAI should be integrated into Musk’s Tesla. Musk left and, years later, founded xAI — its direct competitor to OpenAI, now owned by Musk’s company SpaceX.

In recent years, Musk has filed at least four different lawsuits against OpenAI, several of which have since been dropped or dismissed. However, that company names Altman, Brockman, Microsoft, and OpenAI itself as plaintiffs, and has reached a jury trial in a federal courtroom in California. It is expected to draw testimonials from AI industry leaders, including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott, and former OpenAI CTO Mira Moratti (who is now the founder of her own AI company, Thinking Machines Lab).

The core of the suit alleges that OpenAI violated its core mission of building AGI, or artificial general intelligence, that benefits all of humanity, and it also makes allegations of potential fraud, unjust enrichment, and breach of OpenAI’s charitable trust. Musk calls for The court “to strip Sam Altman and Greg Brockman of their positions of power and the personal financial benefits they derived from OpenAI’s illicit for-profit and diversionary operations” and to reverse OpenAI’s for-profit restructuring, among other things.