Microsoft is named as a defendant in Musk’s updated lawsuit against OpenAI.
Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the business of abandoning its non-profit objective, was withdrawn in July but renewed in August. In an amended lawsuit, the suit includes new defendants, including Microsoft, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and former OpenAI board member and Microsoft VP Dee Templeton.
The updated complaint also includes additional plaintiffs: Shivon Zilis, a Neuralink executive and former OpenAI board member, and Musk’s AI firm, xAI.
Musk was one of the initial founders of OpenAI, a non-profit organization dedicated to researching and developing AI for the benefit of humanity. He departed the company in 2018 due to differences about its direction.
Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the business of abandoning its non-profit objective, was withdrawn in July but renewed in August. In an amended lawsuit, the suit includes new defendants, including Microsoft, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and former OpenAI board member and Microsoft VP Dee Templeton. The updated complaint also includes additional plaintiffs: Shivon Zilis, a Neuralink executive and former OpenAI board member, and Musk’s AI firm, xAI.
Musk was one of the initial founders of OpenAI, a non-profit organization dedicated to researching and developing AI for the benefit of humanity. He departed the company in 2018 due to differences about its direction.
According to the complaint, Hoffman’s position on the boards of both Microsoft and OpenAI, as well as a partner at Greylock, the investment firm, provided him with a privileged — and criminal — insight into the businesses’ dealings. (Hoffman resigned from OpenAI’s board in 2023.) According to Musk’s lawyers, Greylock invested in Inflection, the AI business that Microsoft acquired earlier this year — and may fairly be deemed an OpenAI competitor, according to the complaint.
The updated lawsuit argues that Templeton, whom Microsoft briefly designated as a non-voting board observer at OpenAI, was in a position to enable agreements between Microsoft and OpenAI that would violate antitrust rules.
In violation of antitrust regulations, “the prohibition on interlocking directorates is intended to prevent the sharing of competitively sensitive information and/or to provide a forum for the coordination of other anticompetitive activity,” the lawsuit states. “This goal was compromised by allowing Templeton and Hoffman to be on OpenAI’s… board.”
In Musk’s complaint, Rob Bonta, the attorney general of California, is included as a defendant alongside Microsoft, Hoffman, and Templeton. According to a Bloomberg story this month, OpenAI is discussing the process of altering its corporate structure with Bonta’s office.
Zilis, who left OpenAI’s board in 2023 after almost four years of service, has standing as a “injured employee” under the California Corporations Code, according to the updated complaint. According to the complaint, Zilis frequently voiced internal concerns about OpenAI’s dealmaking, but they were ignored; these concerns were largely the same as Musk’s.
Zilis, who oversaw Neuralink research and served as a project director at Tesla from 2017 to 2019, has strong ties to Musk. Musk’s brain-computer interface project is called Neurolink.
She is also the mother of Musk’s twins, Strider and Azure, as well as Techno Mechanicus.In January 2018, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman suggested that the company sell its own cryptocurrency before deciding to switch to a capped-profit structure. This is one of the unique details included in the 107-page revised lawsuit.
According to an exhibit included with the amended complaint, Altman sent Musk an email on January 21, 2018, saying, “Heads up, spoke to some of the safety team and there were a lot of concerns about the ICO and possible unintended effects in the future.” Initial coin offerings, or ICOs, are an unregulated way for bitcoin businesses to raise money. “I want to stress that this must be kept private, but I think it’s crucial that we get support and give people an opportunity to voice their opinions beforehand.”
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