Attorneys for tech billionaire Elon Musk have filed for a preliminary injunction against OpenAI, several of its co-founders, and its investor and close collaborator, Microsoft, to prevent OpenAI and other named defendants from engaging in what Musk's counsel claims is anticompetitive behavior.
The motion for an injunction, which was filed late on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accuses OpenAI, its CEO Sam Altman, President Greg Brockman, Microsoft, LinkedIn co-founder and former OpenAI board member Reid Hoffman, and former OpenAI board member and Microsoft VP Dee Templeton of various illicit activities and seeks to halt them. The allegations include:
Attorneys for Musk assert that "irreparable harm" will ensue if the injunction isn't granted.
"Plaintiffs and the public need a pause," they wrote in the filing. "An injunction to preserve what is left of OpenAI's nonprofit character, free from self-dealing, is the only appropriate remedy. If not, the OpenAI promised to Musk and the public will be long gone by the time the court reaches the merits."
Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI, which at its core accuses the company of abandoning its original nonprofit mission to make the fruits of its AI research available to all, was withdrawn in July, only to be revived late this summer. In an amended complaint in November, the suit named new defendants including Microsoft, Hoffman, and Templeton, and two new plaintiffs: Shivon Zilis, a Neuralink exec and ex-OpenAI board member, and xAI.
Musk has argued in previous suits that he's been defrauded out of more than $44 million he says he donated to OpenAI by preying on his "well-known concerns about the existential harms" of AI. Musk, one of OpenAI's co-founders, left the company in 2018 over disagreements about its direction.
In the motion for an injunction, Musk's attorneys allege OpenAI is depriving xAI of capital by extracting promises from investors not to fund it and the competition. In October, the Financial Times reported that OpenAI demanded investors in its latest funding round abstain from also funding any of OpenAI's rivals, including xAI.