In this photo, the logo of OpenAI is displayed on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen displaying the photographs of Elon Musk and Sam Altman, in Ankara, Turkey, on March 14, 2024.
Muhammed Selim Korkutata | Anadolu | Getty Images
Elon Musk has revived a lawsuit against Sam Altman in federal court, alleging that the Tesla boss was manipulated into co-founding OpenAI, according to a court filing published Monday.
The crux of Musk’s claims center around his view that he was “courted and deceived” by Altman and current OpenAI President Greg Brockman into co-founding the artificial intelligence firm on the basis that it was a nonprofit.
After Musk came on board and invested millions of dollars, the lawsuit claims he was “betrayed by Altman and his accomplices” as they, along with Microsoft, “established an opaque web of for-profit OpenAI affiliates, engaged in rampant self-dealing.”
“The perfidy and deceit are of Shakespearean proportions,” the lawsuit alleges.
The claims in the new lawsuit are similar to another lawsuit filed by Musk against OpenAI and Altman in California this year, which the Tesla and SpaceX boss ultimately dropped.
Musk has been very vocal over the past few years about his fear of artificial intelligence and the dangers it poses to humanity. Musk states in the latest lawsuit, filed in a district court in Northern California, that he was “manipulated” into co-founding OpenAI by Altman and Brockman, who allegedly promised “that it would chart a safer, more open course than profit-driven tech giants.”
“Altman assured Musk that the non-profit structure guaranteed neutrality and a focus on safety and openness for the benefit of humanity, not shareholder value. But as it turns out, this was all hot-air philanthropy—the hook for Altman’s long con,” the lawsuit claims.
An OpenAI spokesperson pointed CNBC to a blog post after Musk’s initial lawsuit in March.
“As we said about Elon’s initial legal filing, which was subsequently withdrawn, Elon’s prior emails continue to speak for themselves,” the spokesperson said.
Microsoft declined to comment on this story. Tesla did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Identifying OpenAI as a nonprofit with no shareholders, the lawsuit states that Microsoft “sought to obtain leverage in other ways by, for example, enticing OpenAI, Inc. to use and become inextricably dependent on Microsoft’s cloud computing system.”
“While Musk expressed a liking for Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella … the values of the company and OpenAI, Inc. did not align,” the lawsuit claims.
Microsoft is the biggest investor in OpenAI and has poured a reported $13 billion into the company.
“Over the course of the next few years and continuing to today, Microsoft methodically entrenched itself further into OpenAI,” the lawsuit alleges.
— CNBC’s Jordan Novet contributed to this report.