OpenAI has asked the attorneys general of California and Delaware to consider investigating the “improper and anticompetitive behavior” of Elon Musk and his associates. This comes ahead of a trial between the two sides set to begin this month.
Musk sued OpenAI — which he co-founded in 2015 — along with its CEO Sam Altman and others in 2024. He accused them of violating OpenAI’s founding mission while restructuring into a for-profit entity. Musk left OpenAI in 2018 to found his AI company, xAI.
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In a court filing in August, OpenAI said Musk tried to enlist rival Mark Zuckerberg for the bid his consortium made for OpenAI early last year, but the Meta Platforms CEO did not come on board. On Monday, the ChatGPT maker sent a letter to California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings, stating that the lawsuit sought damages of more than $100 billion from its nonprofit foundation, which it said would effectively cripple the organization. A judge in Oakland, California, ruled in January that a jury will hear the case, with the trial expected to start in April.
Earlier this year, Musk asked a U.S. court to award him as much as $134 billion from OpenAI and its key partner, Microsoft, claiming the companies profited enormously from his early backing of the artificial intelligence startup. In a court filing, he argued that OpenAI and Microsoft reaped what he called “wrongful gains” tied to his role as a co-founder and early supporter of OpenAI beginning in 2015. According to the document, OpenAI’s valuation and related benefits surged by an estimated $65.5 billion to $109.4 billion as a result of Musk’s contributions in its formative years. Microsoft, which later became OpenAI’s most influential commercial partner, is alleged to have gained between $13.3 billion and $25.1 billion from that foundation, Musk said.
OpenAI has previously called Musk’s accusations “baseless” and accused him of waging a campaign of “harassment” against the company. Microsoft has also pushed back, with one of its lawyers saying there is no evidence the company “aided and abetted” OpenAI.
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OpenAI’s chief strategy officer Jason Kwon said in the letter sent on Monday that the lawsuit could undermine the company’s efforts to ensure that artificial general intelligence, or AGI, benefits all of humanity. Kwon added, “Musk’s filings in the litigation “suggest that your offices did not thoroughly investigate OpenAI’s plan to recapitalize and merely relied on promises about what OpenAI will do in the future.”