Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI

Extracted Attributes

• Judge

  U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers

• Defendant

  OpenAI

• Plaintiff

  Elon Musk

• Core Allegation

  Breach of Founding Agreement, deviation from non-profit mission, becoming a de facto Microsoft subsidiary

• Defendant (implied)

  Sam Altman

• OpenAI's Counter-Claim

  Musk tried to harm the company, lawsuit is self-serving

• OpenAI's Founding Mission

  To advance digital intelligence for the benefit of humanity, free from financial obligation (non-profit)

• Musk's Contributions to OpenAI

  From founding (December 2015) through September 14, 2020

• Reid Hoffman's Characterization

  Sour grapes

Timeline

• OpenAI, Inc. was publicly announced as a non-profit artificial intelligence research company, with Elon Musk and Sam Altman named as co-chairs. (Source: Courthouse News Service PDF)

  2015-12-11

• Elon Musk stated that OpenAI needed to evolve its structure. (Source: OpenAI blog)

  2017

• Elon Musk's contributions to OpenAI, Inc. ceased. (Source: Courthouse News Service PDF)

  2020-09-14

• Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging breach of founding agreement and deviation from its non-profit mission. (Source: Courthouse News Service PDF)

  2024-02-29

• U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers expressed skepticism about Elon Musk's lawsuit but allowed the case to proceed, also expressing concerns about the OpenAI-Microsoft relationship. (Source: sustainabletechpartner.com)

  2025-02-04

• The court rejected Elon Musk's request for a preliminary injunction and dismissed several of his claims, finding he had not demonstrated likelihood of success on the merits. (Source: OpenAI blog, nbcbayarea.com)

  2025-03-05

• OpenAI filed a counter-suit against Elon Musk, claiming he has 'tried every tool available to harm' the company. (Source: sustainabletechpartner.com)

  2025-04-09

• A dozen former OpenAI employees filed a legal brief backing Elon Musk's lawsuit, aimed at keeping the non-profit status of OpenAI. (Source: sustainabletechpartner.com)

  2025-04-11

• Elon Musk stated he would maintain his lawsuit against OpenAI. (Source: sustainabletechpartner.com)

  2025-05-06

Business career of Elon Musk

Elon Musk is a businessman known predominantly for his leading roles in the automotive company Tesla, Inc. and the space company SpaceX. Musk is also known for his ownership of technology company X Corp. and his role in the founding of the Boring Company, xAI, Neuralink, and OpenAI. In 1995, Musk, co-founded what would later be known as Zip2, later selling the company to Compaq for $307 million in 1999. Receiving $22 million in the process, Musk used $12 million of the proceedings to co-found the e-payment company X.com that same year. In 2000, X.com merged with the online bank Confinity and was rebranded as PayPal. In 2002, Musk received $176 million after PayPal acquired eBay as the companies largest shareholder, and would much later purchase the X.com domain from PayPal, with the intention of creating an "everything app". In 2004, with an investment of $6.3 million, Musk then became the chairman and majority shareholder of Tesla. In 2016, Musk co-founded the neurotechnology startup company Neuralink, with an investment of $100 million, followed by founding the Boring Company to construct tunnels. In 2022, Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter, becoming the CEO of Twitter, prior to its rebranding to X. Beginning with his involvement with space exploration companies in early 2001, he founded SpaceX in 2002, with the company attempting the first rocket launch in 2006. Since 2019, SpaceX been developing Starship, a reusable, super heavy-lift launch vehicle, and in 2015, they began development of the Starlink for satellite Internet access. Having sent Starlink terminals to Ukraine in 2022, Musk refused to block Russian state media on Starlink and later faced criticism over denying access over Crimea. With Tesla, he assumed leadership as CEO and product architect in 2008. In 2018, Musk was sued by the SEC for a tweet stating that funding had been secured for potentially taking Tesla private, later settling with the SEC, with Musk steping down as Tesla chairman while remaining its CEO. In 2023, shareholders filed a lawsuit, and a jury subsequently found Musk and Tesla not liable. As of 2019, Musk was the longest-tenured CEO of any automotive manufacturer globally, and under the CEO, Tesla has also constructed multiple lithium-ion battery and electric vehicle factories, named Gigafactories.

Web Search Results

• Generative AI Lawsuits Timeline: Legal Cases vs. OpenAI, ...

  February 4 - Elon Musk vs. OpenAI:U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is skeptical about Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI, but she allowed the case to proceed while also expressing concerns about the OpenAI-Microsoft relationship, The Associated Press reported. February 4 - AI and Retail Technology:Alpha Modus filed a lawsuit against Walgreens for what it called patent infringement concerning its AI-driven retail technology, MarketWatch reported. [...] May 6 - Lawsuit vs. Microsoft:Cerence filed a copyright infringement and breach of contract lawsuit against Microsoft and Nuance Communications. The lawsuit AI-focused lawsuit involves text-to-speech technology. May 6 - Elon Musk vs. OpenAIO:Musk will maintain his lawsuit against OpenAi, even though the ChatGPT software maker abandoned plans to pursue a for-profit business model, Reuters reported. [...] April 11 - Lawsuit vs OpenAI:A dozen former OpenAI employees filed a legal brief backing co-founder Musk's lawsuit aimed at keeping the non-profit status of OpenAI. However, DOGE staff have not requested nor been granted access to sensitive bank information, the report said. (Source: Reuters) April 9 - Counter Lawsuit:OpenAI filed suit against Musk, claiming the world’s richest person has “tried every tool available to harm” the AI company, CNBC reported.

• The court rejects Elon's latest attempt to slow OpenAI down

  Listen to article Share This lawsuit has always been about what’s good for Elon and his own for-profit AI company. The truth is, he wanted to merge a for-profit OpenAI into Tesla - as hisown emails⁠ show. We turned him down and he left because he couldn’t seize control. When he later saw the progress we’d made without him, Elon began resorting to baseless lawsuits while still trying to copy our playbook to develop competing models with his own for-profit, multi-billion-dollar company. [...] Last week, the court rejected Elon’s request for a preliminary injunction, finding that he hadn’t “demonstrated likelihood of success on the merits” of his claims. In fact,the court went further, dismissing several of his claims from the case entirely. This ruling brings us a big step closer to putting this ridiculous lawsuit to rest. [...] In a way, Elon was right when he said in 2017 that we needed to evolve OpenAI’s structure. He was also right when he formed his own AI company, xAI, as a public-benefit corporation. But he’s wrong when it comes to this baseless, cynically self-serving lawsuit, the false allegations propping it up, and other petty tactics like the so-called “bid”. The court has rightly seen through this latest attempt, and we’re confident it will continue to do so. Author ------ OpenAI

• [PDF] musk-v-altman-openai-complaint-sf.pdf - Courthouse News Service

  16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 – 14 – COMPLAINT 57. OpenAI, Inc. was publicly announced on December 11, 2015. In the announcement, Mr. Musk and Mr. Altman were named as co-chairs and Mr. Brockman was named as the CTO. The announcement emphasized that OpenAI was designed to “benefit humanity,” and its research would be “free from financial obligation”: OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research company. Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most [...] everything.” “We are below them, above them, around them.” 33. This case is filed to compel OpenAI to adhere to the Founding Agreement and return to its mission to develop AGI for the benefit of humanity, not to personally benefit the individual Defendants and the largest technology company in the world. Detailed Allegations A. Mr. Musk’s Concerns Over AGI Falling Into The Wrong Hands 34. In 2012, Elon Musk met Demis Hassabis, the co-founder of DeepMind, a for-profit artificial intelligence [...] 23 24 25 26 27 28 – 7 – COMPLAINT Musk continued to make contributions to OpenAI, Inc. from its founding through September 14, 2020. 27. OpenAI’s initial research was performed in the open, providing free and public access to designs, models, and code. When OpenAI, Inc. researchers discovered that an algorithm called “Transformers,” initially invented by Google, could perform many natural language tasks without any explicit training, entire communities sprung up to enhance and extend the models

• Musk loses injunction bid in OpenAI lawsuit but still wins big with ...

  Trending⛳️ Celebrity golf in Tahoe🎾 Wimbledon finals'Alligator Alcatraz'Trash collection delaysSF skyscraper planHello Kitty Cafe Expand Image 2 Elon Musk Musk loses injunction bid in OpenAI lawsuit but still wins big with judge's ruling ================================================================================== #### By Joe Dworetzky | Bay City News •Published March 5, 2025•Updated on March 5, 2025 at 2:59 pm Log in or create a free profile to save articles BOOKMARKER [...] Musk asked U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers to enter "preliminary injunctions" against Altman and OpenAI that would block further allegedly improper conduct while the litigation was pending. In particular, Musk asked the judge to prevent OpenAI from "converting" its charter to a for-profit company while the litigation was pending. Get a weekly recap of the latest San Francisco Bay Area housing news with the Housing Deconstructed newsletter. Image 7: Newsletter button SIGN UP [...] In the new version, Musk claimed that the defendants had violated federal antitrust and securities laws and that Altman's alleged self-dealing amounted to racketeering. Those claims were accompanied by various claims under state law, including the one that had been the flagship of the original suit -- that Altman had violated the charitable purposes of its charter.

• AI Infringement Case Updates: April 7, 2025

  Background:News publishers Raw Story Media and Alternet filed suit against OpenAI and Microsoft on February 28th, 2024 in the Southern District of New York, claiming their articles were used to train the LLM that powers OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Rather than claiming copyright infringement, Plaintiffs alleged one cause of action for violating the DMCA (which is a separate provision of the Copyright Act related to Internet content). Plaintiffs claimed that OpenAI removed the CMI from their articles, [...] Background:The Intercept Media, a news publisher represented by the same firm that represents the plaintiffs in the _Raw Story Media_ litigation below _,_ filed suit against OpenAI and Microsoft on February 28th, 2024 in the Southern District of New York, the same day Raw Story Media commenced their suit. Like the _Raw Story_ allegations, The Intercept alleged that their articles were used to train ChatGPT and brought claims for the removal of the copyright management information (“CMI”) from [...] “output”) infringes their copyrighted works because there is no “substantial similarity” on the “output” side of the copyright question (and, therefore, no meaningful harm).But the Court gave Plaintiffs an opportunity to amend their complaint to plead a more direct link of harm (which they later did). In July, the Court dismissed the unfair competition claim. The claim for direct infringement is the only main one that remains. The case is assigned to Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin.