Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk expanded his lawsuit against ChatGPT maker OpenAI, adding federal antitrust and other claims and adding OpenAI’s largest financial backer, Microsoft, as a defendant.
Musk’s amended complaint, filed late Thursday in federal court in Oakland, California, claimed that Microsoft and OpenAI illegally sought to monopolize the generative artificial intelligence market and sideline competitors.
Like Musk’s original lawsuit from August, it accused OpenAI and its CEO, Samuel Altman, of violating contractual provisions by putting profits ahead of the public good in pushing for the advancement of AI.
“Never before has a corporation gone from a tax-exempt charity to a for-profit, $157 billion market-crippling gorgon, and in just eight years,” the lawsuit said. It intends to annul OpenAI’s license with Microsoft and force them to part with “ill-gotten” profits.
OpenAI said in a statement that the latest lawsuit “is even more baseless and overreaching than previous ones.”
Microsoft and Musk’s lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Musk has long opposed OpenAI, a startup he co-founded that has since become the face of generative AI thanks to billions of dollars in funding from Microsoft.
Musk has gained new prominence as a key force in the incoming administration of US President-elect Donald Trump. Trump appointed Musk to a new position aimed at reducing government waste after he donated millions of dollars to Trump’s Republican campaign.
The expanded lawsuit said OpenAI and Microsoft violated antitrust law by conditioning investment opportunities on agreements not to deal with the companies’ rivals. It said the companies’ exclusive licensing agreement amounted to a merger that lacked regulatory approvals.
In a court filing last month, OpenAI accused Musk of pursuing the lawsuit as part of an “increasingly boastful campaign to harass OpenAI for its own competitive advantage.”
