A US judge on Tuesday denied Elon Musk’s request for a preliminary injunction to pause OpenAI’s transition to a for-profit model but agreed to hear a trial in the fall of this year, the latest turn in the high-stakes legal fight.
The tech billionaire does not have “the high burden required for a preliminary injunction” to block the conversion of OpenAI, said Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, a US district judge in Oakland, California.
But Rogers wrote in the order that she wanted to resolve the lawsuit quickly given “the public interest at stake and potential for harm if a conversion contrary to law occurred”.
Musk and OpenAI, which he co-founded as a non-profit in 2015 but left before it took off, have been embroiled in a yearlong legal battle. The CEO of Tesla and X, formerly Twitter, accuses OpenAI of straying from its founding mission to develop artificial intelligence for the good of humanity, not corporate profit.
OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, have denied the allegations. At stake in the lawsuit is the ChatGPT maker’s transition to a for-profit model, which Altman has said is crucial to raising more capital and competing well in the expensive AI race.
OpenAI welcomed the judge’s decision on Tuesday, saying the lawsuit by Musk, who launched the rival startup xAI in 2023, has “always been about competition”. OpenAI’s main backer, Microsoft, did not respond to a request for comment.
Marc Toberoff, a lawyer for Musk, said they were pleased the judge “offered an expedited trial on the core claims driving this case”.
“We look forward to a jury confirming that Altman accepted Musk’s charitable contributions knowing full well they had to be used for the public’s benefit rather than his own enrichment,” Toberoff said.
The ruling comes weeks after Altman rejected a $97.4bn unsolicited takeover bid from a Musk-led consortium with a “no thank you”. Altman, who has said OpenAI is not for sale, alleges that Musk has been trying to slow down a competitor.
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SoftBank Group is in talks to lead a funding round of up to $40bn in OpenAI at a valuation of $300bn. That would dwarf the $75bn valuation xAI has discussed in a recent fundraiser.
