Tesla's Musk sues OpenAI again, accusing it of extortion

On August 5, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has refiled a lawsuit against OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research institute, and its co-founders Sam Altman and Brookman, according to court filings. Musk claims that he invested in OpenAI based on its commitment to be a non-profit organization, but later discovered that OpenAI and its partners, including Microsoft, had set up a series of opaque for-profit subsidiaries.

Musk accuses these actions of violating his intent when he invested in OpenAI, and states that “the purported non-profit status and neutrality was actually a hollow sham, a long con by Altman.”

This is not Musk’s first lawsuit against OpenAI. He filed a similar suit in March, but dropped it in June. Musk’s lawyers explained that the previous suit was “not strong enough,” and that this new suit alleges that OpenAI engaged in “extortion.”