New names appear in Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI

There are also new plaintiffs in the case: Siobhan Zilis, director of Neuralink, who was on OpenAI’s board of directors, and xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company.

In June 2024, Elon Musk dropped his lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the company of abandoning its nonprofit mission. However, already in August he sent the court an updated version of the complaint, in which new faces now appeared.

The essence of the claims set forth in the complaint:

• OpenAI is “actively trying to destroy competitors” like xAI by “getting promises from investors not to fund them”;

• OpenAI gains an unfair advantage by benefiting from Microsoft’s infrastructure and expertise, which is “a de facto merger”;

• Hoffman’s position on the boards of Microsoft and OpenAI, as well as his status as a partner at the investment firm Greylock, gives him undue knowledge of the company’s transactions.

• Templeton, who was briefly appointed as a non-voting observer on OpenAI’s board of directors, allegedly may have facilitated deals between Microsoft and OpenAI that would have violated antitrust rules.

In addition to Microsoft, Hoffman and Templeton, California Attorney General Rob Bonta is named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

According to the new complaint, Zilis has “injured employee” status under the California Corporations Code. He repeatedly raised concerns about transactions within OpenAI, but they were ignored.

Zilis served as a project manager at Tesla from 2017 to 2019 and led research at Neuralink. Additionally, she and Musk have three children together: twins Strider and Azur, as well as Techno Mechanicus.

The new version of the 107-page complaint contains an unusual detail: In September 2017, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman proposed selling his own cryptocurrency, but Musk reportedly rejected the idea.

The core of the complaint remains the same: OpenAI benefited from Elon Musk’s initial involvement, but broke its promise to make its AI research public.