Elon Musk targets Microsoft in amended OpenAI lawsuit

Elon Musk has updated his fraud, breach of contract, and racketeering lawsuit against OpenAI to make antitrust claims against Microsoft, accusing the two companies of attempting to “monopolize the generative AI market.” The amended complaint filed on Thursday names Microsoft as a new defendant, as well as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Microsoft VP Dee Templeton, a former OpenAI board member.

Microsoft has invested $14 billion in OpenAI since 2019 and holds exclusive rights to commercially license the AI startup’s technology and a 49 percent stake in its for-profit subsidiary. Musk’s lawyers say that former OpenAI CEO Sam Altman “engaged in rampant self-dealing” to create a “de facto merger” between the two companies to promote anticompetitive practices.

The lawsuit argues that OpenAI and Microsoft are “actively trying to eliminate competitors” by exchanging “competitively sensitive information,” and making their investors refrain from funding rival companies like xAI, Musk’s AI company. Both companies are competing for funding in the growing AI market, with OpenAI securing $6.6 billion in October to build more powerful AI models. xAI raised $6 billion in its own funding round in March to accelerate its development of “future technologies.”

xAI has also been added to the complaint as a new plaintiff, alongside former OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis — an executive at Musk’s Neuralink company and mother of three of his 12 children.

We have reached out to OpenAI and Microsoft for comment on the amendments.

Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 with Altman and Greg Brockman, who are also defendants in the complaint, before leaving the company in 2018. A previous lawsuit that Musk launched in March (and dropped without explanation in June) accused OpenAI of abandoning its founding agreement to develop AI that will benefit humanity, and claimed its partnership with Microsoft made OpenAI a “closed-source de facto subsidiary” focused on maximizing profits.