In a California district court, Elon Musk’s lawyers filed for a preliminary injunction on Friday to ensure the former non-profit status of ChatGPT creators, OpenAI. The company completed a new funding round in October 2024, largely abandoning its previous “non-profit status.” Since 2015, the AI startup founded by Sam Altman worked with capped profit distribution to its investors. New investors like Nvidia and Microsoft did not want to continue this.
Since March 2024, Elon Musk has made several legal attempts against OpenAI, and the court process seems too slow for him now. According to Techcrunch, the lawsuit states: “A preliminary injunction to preserve the remaining non-profit character of OpenAI, free from self-dealing, is the only appropriate measure. Otherwise, the OpenAI promised to Musk and the public will have long disappeared by the time the court decides.”
Investors are allegedly being kept away from xAI. Musk was one of the co-founders of OpenAI in 2015 but left three years later, before the success of services like ChatGPT. In the spring, Musk saw OpenAI’s founding agreement violated and raised allegations of breach of fiduciary duties and unfair competition. The latter now seems to be the main reason for seeking a preliminary injunction. During the last funding round for OpenAI, Musk complained that a condition for investors was that they could not invest in other AI companies. This also affected Musk’s own AI company, xAI, which the tech billionaire is heavily investing in with other entities.
As a result, the chatbot Grok is expected to soon receive its own smartphone app, something competitors like Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI already offer.
In a statement to Techcrunch, OpenAI rejected the accusations, calling them “grandiose and unfounded.” The company is confident it can fend off this latest attack from Elon Musk.