Musk wants to enforce OpenAI's non-profit status in court
An injunction is to force OpenAI not to work purely for profit. This also concerns Musk's own project, xAI.
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On Friday, Elon Musk's lawyers applied to a Californian district court for a temporary injunction which, among other things, is intended to secure the former non-profit status of ChatGPT maker OpenAI. The company completed a new financing round in October 2024, in which it largely gave up its previous "non-profit status". Since 2015, Sam Altmann's AI startup had been working with a capped profit distribution to its investors, which new investors such as Nvidia and Microsoft were no longer willing to support.
Elon Musk has been suing OpenAI in several attempts since March 2024, and the legal proceedings no longer seem to be going fast enough for him. Techcrunch quotes from the statement of claim: "An injunction to preserve the remainder of OpenAI's non-profit character, free from self-dealing, is the only appropriate remedy. Otherwise, the OpenAI promised to Musk and the public will be long gone by the time the court rules on the matter."
Investors allegedly to be kept away from xAI
Musk was one of the co-founders of OpenAI in 2015, but left three years later, before the huge success of services such as ChatGPT. In the spring, Musk was still in breach of OpenAI's founding agreement and made allegations of breach of fiduciary duties and unfair competition, among other things.
The latter now also appears to be the main reason for the request for an injunction. During the last financing round for OpenAI, Elon Musk complained that one condition for investors was that they were not allowed to invest their money in other AI companies. Musk's own AI company, xAI, is also said to be affected by this. The tech billionaire is investing heavily in this company with the help of other entities. As a result, the Grok chatbot will soon have its own app for smartphones, something that competitors such as Anthropic, Google and OpenAI have long been offering.
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In a statement to Techcrunch, OpenAI rejected the accusations. They are "pompous and unfounded". The company is confident that it will also be able to fend off this latest attack from Elon Musk.
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