Elon Musk has expanded his ongoing lawsuit against ChatGPT maker OpenAI to include Microsoft and a batch of new antitrust allegations.

The updated lawsuit, filed on Thursday in the US District Court for Northern California, also names LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman as a defendant as well as Microsoft VP Dee Templeton, who previously served on the board of OpenAI.

Musk—who sued OpenAI in March—now alleges that OpenAI is attempting to eliminate its competitors by stopping its investors from funding rival AI firms. The suit also argues that OpenAI’s partnership with Microsoft has allowed the two tech firms to exchange “competitively sensitive information."

OpenAI has gone from a “tax-exempt charity to a $157bn for-profit, market-paralyzing gorgon – and in just eight years,” according to the filing, which also accuses OpenAI CEO Sam Altman of “rampant self dealing." (A gorgon is a fierce monster from Greek mythology.)

"As a result of their unlawful actions, defendants have been unjustly enriched to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars in value, while Mr. Musk has been conned along with the public," it says.

In a statement to the New York Times, OpenAI says “Elon’s third attempt in less than a year to reframe his claims is even more baseless and overreaching than the previous ones." Microsoft has yet to release a statement.

Microsoft is by far OpenAI’s biggest investor; it has invested $14 billion in the company since 2019, The Wall Street Journal notes, and owns almost 50% of the start-up’s commercial unit.

Musk first sued OpenAI and Altman in March, alleging breach of contract because OpenAI has switched course from this founding mission. Roughly three months later, Musk dropped that lawsuit, but renewed the legal fight in August alleging wire fraud resulting in a "pattern of racketeering activity," breaches of contract, and false advertising, among other claims.

The 83-page document claimed that Musk, one of OpenAI’s earliest investors, invested over $44.5 million in OpenAI between May 2016 and September 2020 via a series of small wire transfers. Musk was "manipulated" and falsely led to the belief that OpenAI "decentralizes its technology by making it open source," the suit says.

Musk is now funding an OpenAI rival. In July, his xAI startup opened up a sprawling supercomputing facility in Memphis, Tennessee, to train AI chatbot Grok.

By: DocMemory
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