Elon Musk sues OpenAI and Sam Altman again
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Elon Musk at an event in Cannes, France on June 19. Photo: Marc Piasecki/Getty Images
Elon Musk filed a new lawsuit Monday against OpenAI and two of its founders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, two months after withdrawing a similar suit.
Why it matters: Musk's new complaint, like the original lawsuit, alleges that Altman and Brockman abandoned the company's founding agreement by prioritizing profits over the public interest.
Driving the news: The suit claims that Altman and the other defendants "deceived" Musk into cofounding OpenAI back in 2015 by promising the company would be a nonprofit with "a focus on safety and openness for the benefit of humanity, not shareholder value."
- The suit claims Altman and others later abandoned these objectives, as illustrated by OpenAI's partnership with Microsoft.
- "The perfidy and deceit are of Shakespearean proportions," the lawsuit stated.
- Musk is seeking a jury trial.
What they're saying: "If you compare the claims in the two lawsuit and the remedies sought they are like chalk and cheese," Musk's lawyer, Marc Toberoff, told Axios in a statement Monday.
- "This lawsuit holds Defendants accountable for their intentional misrepresentations to Musk and the public and seeks the disgorgement of their ill-gotten gains," he added.
- OpenAI pointed Axios to a blog post it published in March in response to the original lawsuit, which stressed that the company was still committed to its mission of ensuring that artificial general intelligence "benefits all of humanity."
- "As we said about Elon's initial legal filing, which was subsequently withdrawn, Elon's prior emails continue to speak for themselves," an OpenAI spokesperson told Axios in a statement.
Catch up quick: Musk filed the original lawsuit against Altman and OpenAI in March.
- In response, OpenAI released emails from Musk showing him agreeing with the company's plan to raise more money and move away from open-source releases of its products.
- Musk's lawyers ultimately withdrew the lawsuit in June, though they did not provide a reason for doing so.
- Musk himself has previously posted election-related misinformation on X, though he defended the content as parody.
Go deeper: Elon Musk withdraws lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman
Editor's note: This story was updated with a response from OpenAI.
