According to Musk, OpenAI should remain a non-profit organization / Photo: Frederic Legrand - COMEO / Shutterstock.com
Billionaire Elon Musk is seeking the firing of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and company president Greg Brockman as part of a lawsuit against the ChatGPT developer's conversion to a for-profit entity that is expected to go to trial as early as the end of this month, CNBC writes.
A court document filed Tuesday, April 7, says the lawsuit aims to "undo OpenAI's transition to a for-profit model and its restructuring." That would involve, among other things, removing Altman and Brockman from their positions and removing Altman from the board of directors, the document shows. Musk is also seeking to restore OpenAI's status as a nonprofit research organization.
Any compensation he may receive as a result of the proceedings should be given to the startup's charitable arm, the billionaire notes. Earlier, Musk's lawyers said that OpenAI and its lead investor Microsoft should pay the plaintiff up to $134 billion.
"The relief Musk seeks is directly related to the purpose of filing this lawsuit: to prevent a public charity, which he co-founded and for which he was a major funder in its early stages of development, from being subordinated to private commercial interests," the document states.
It was filed a day after OpenAI Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon called on the attorneys general of California and Delaware to investigate Musk for possible "improper and anticompetitive conduct" in his efforts to block the company's restructuring.
After filing the lawsuit on Tuesday, OpenAI said that "this case was always about Elon Musk getting more power and money to realize his goals." The ChatGPT developer attributed the proceedings to a "desire to slow down a competitor," he wrote on social network X.
Context
Musk, Altman and other businessmen founded OpenAI as a nonprofit artificial intelligence lab in 2015, but then the relationship between the two entrepreneurs deteriorated sharply. Musk left the board in 2018, and in 2023 he founded the artificial intelligence company xAI, which became one of OpenAI's main competitors.
Musk filed a lawsuit against Altman and OpenAI in 2024, claiming that the AI company he helped create "purposefully manipulated" him and "misled him" into donating $38 million based on promises that the organization would remain a nonprofit, CNBC recalls. Since then, the parties have been embroiled not only in a legal battle, but also in a public exchange of harsh statements.
Last February, OpenAI rejected Musk's offer to buy the assets of the nonprofit that controls the company for $97.4 billion. A few months later, the startup completed a restructuring and is now run as a nonprofit, owning a 26% stake in the for-profit division, which includes ChatGPT. This has paved the way for the company to raise additional capital and potentially go public, which is expected later this year, Bloomberg writes.
This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor
