Elon Musk expands his lawsuit against OpenAI, drags Microsoft & adds federal antitrust claims

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has expanded his lawsuit against the ChatGPT maker OpenAI, dragging the company’s largest financial backer, Microsoft. In the lawsuit, the billionaire added federal antitrust and other claims and mentioned Microsoft as one of the defendants.

According to the Reuters, Musk’s amended lawsuit was filed on Thursday night in a federal court in Oakland, California. The lawsuit alleged that Microsoft and OpenAI illegally sought to monopolize the market for generative artificial intelligence and have sidelined other competitors.

In the new filing, Musk retained his original complaint in which he accused OpenAI and its chief executive, Samuel Altman, of violating contract provisions by putting profits ahead of the public good. “Never before has a corporation gone from tax-exempt charity to a $157bn for-profit, market-paralyzing gorgon – and in just eight years,” the complaint said.

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The lawsuit is seeking to void OpenAI from its license with Microsoft. While responding to the lawsuit, OpenAI said that the latest lawsuit “is even more baseless and overreaching than the previous ones”. Meanwhile, Microsoft has declined to comment on the matter.

“Microsoft’s anticompetitive practices have escalated,” Musk’s attorney Marc Toberoff said in a statement. “Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” he added. Musk has been an ardent opponent to OpenAI, a startup he co-founded, after the Artificial Intelligence company received billions in funding from Microsoft.

The expanded lawsuit noted that both OpenAI and Microsoft violated antitrust law by conditioning investment opportunities on agreements to not deal with the company’s rivals. Musk’s team noted that the companies’ exclusive licensing agreement amounted to a merger that lacked regulatory approval.

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Meanwhile, the court filing last month, OpenAI accused Musk of pursuing the lawsuit as part of an “increasingly blusterous campaign to harass OpenAI for his own competitive advantage”. In the span of just a few months, Musk has become one of the most influential billionaires in the country.

This happened after the Tesla CEO supported Republican firebrand Donald Trump, who ultimately won the 2024 US Presidential Election. Shortly after winning, Trump announced that Musk will be handling a new Department called the Department of Government Efficiency alongside biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. However, it will be interesting to see whether Musk’s sway in the government will have any impact on the looming lawsuit.

With inputs from Reuters.