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 a federal court in 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 first started proceedings against OpenAI in March—now alleges that OpenAI is attempting to eliminate its competitors, by stopping its investors funding rival AI firms.
The suit also alleges 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. A “Gorgon” is a fierce monster from Greek myth. The updated lawsuit also accused OpenAI CEO Sam Altman of “rampant self dealing”.
“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 read.
Microsoft is by far OpenAI’s biggest investor, has invested $14 billion in the company since 2019, and owes roughly 49% of the start-up’s commercial unit.
The latest legal action comes after Musk accused OpenAI of committing wire fraud in a previous filing in August. The 83-page document claimed that the Tesla CEO, 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.
The filing also claimed that Musk was “manipulated” and was falsely led to the belief that OpenAI “decentralizes its technology by making it open source.”
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But Musk has increasingly become a competitor of OpenAI during 2024. In July, Elon Musk’s xAI startup opened up a sprawling supercomputing facility in Memphis, Tennessee, to train AI chatbot Grok.
Microsoft has yet to release a statement on the allegations at the time of writing.
OpenAI’s Jason Deutrom commented that: “Elon’s third attempt in less than a year to reframe his claims is even more baseless and overreaching than the previous ones,” in a statement shared with The New York Times.
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