The lawsuit between Elon Musk and OpenAI is really heating up.
OpenAI just dropped a new blog post defending itself against Musk that outlines some new text messages between cofounders Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and former board member Shivon Zilis.
“You can’t sue your way to AGI,” the OpenAI blog post reads, referring to artificial general intelligence, which Altman has promised soon. “We have great respect for Elon’s accomplishments and gratitude for his early contributions to OpenAl, but he should be competing in the marketplace rather than the courtroom. It is critical for the U.S. to remain the global leader in Al. Our mission is to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity, and we have been and will remain a mission-driven organization. We hope Elon shares that goal, and will uphold the values of innovation and free market competition that have driven his own success.”
The blog highlights Musk’s attempts to maneuver into the CEO position and gain majority control of the company (though it adds that on one call Musk said he “didn’t care about equity” but “just needed to accumulate $80B for a city on Mars”). Musk also proposed that OpenAI spin into Tesla, which has been previously revealed. When the negotiations fell apart because OpenAI’s cofounders rejected his proposal (Brockman and Sutskever admitted they had fears of a power struggle), Musk resigned from the company.
The blog said that after Musk resigned, he hosted a goodbye all-hands with the team where he encouraged them to “pursue the path we saw to raising billions per year” and that “he would pursue advanced Al research at Tesla, which was the only vehicle he believed could obtain this level of funding.”
Later, around the time Musk was working to acquire Twitter, he texted Altman that he was “disturbed” to see the company’s new $20 billion valuation. “De facto. I provided almost all the seed, A and most of B round funding,” he wrote, according to the disclosed texts. “This is a bait and switch.”
A few months after that interaction, Musk started an OpenAI competitor, xAI.
Some of the messages published by OpenAI were previously outlined in court filings that Musk made in his ongoing suit against OpenAI and its partner Microsoft. The lawsuit, filed by Musk in March, alleges that OpenAI had strayed from its original nonprofit mission to develop AI for the public good (he withdrew it in June 2024 without explanation, then refiled in August 2024).
Today’s update from OpenAI attempts to counter Musk’s narrative by offering evidence that he, not Altman, attempted to seize control in the company’s early days — a direct response to Musk’s recent lawsuit claims about Altman’s power consolidation.
