OpenAI denies Elon Musk lawsuit claim that there ever was founding agreement

OpenAI
has
challenged
a
foundational
claim


Tesla
CEO
Elon
Musk
made
in

the
lawsuit
he
filed
against
the
startup
earlier
this
month.

As
it
seeks
to
commercialize
its
ChatGPT
chatbot
and
underlying
artificial
intelligence
models,
OpenAI
faces
a
slew
of
legal
battles,
including
the
one
from
Musk
and
cases
over
copyright
infringement
from
the

New
York
Times
and

authors.
OpenAI
reacted
to
Musk’s
complaint
last
week
by
deriding
it
in
a

memo
to
employees
and
releasing

emails
involving
him
that
go
back
to
its
earliest
days.

Musk,
who
claimed
breach
of
contract
at
the
startup
that
he
backed,
referred
in
his
complaint
earlier
this
month
to
a
2015
“founding
agreement”
with
him
and
two
other
OpenAI
co-founders,
Sam
Altman
and
Greg
Brockman.
The
three
were
agreeing
that
a
new
AI
lab
would
be
a
nonprofit
for
the
benefit
of
humanity
and
that
it
would
not
keep
information
private
for
commercial
benefit,
Musk
said.

He
went
on
to
say
that
in
releasing
the

GPT-4
large
language
model
last
year
without
providing
scientific
details
for
public
consumption,
OpenAI
breached
that
agreement.

“There
is
no
Founding
Agreement,
or
any
agreement
at
all
with
Musk,
as
the
complaint
itself
makes
clear,”
OpenAI
said
in
a
document
on
file
with
California’s
superior
court
for
San
Francisco
County.
“The
Founding
Agreement
is
instead
a
fiction
Musk
has
conjured
to
lay
unearned
claim
to
the
fruits
of
an
enterprise
he
initially
supported,
then
abandoned,
then
watched
succeed
without
him.”

Musk
quoted
OpenAI’s
2015
certificate
of
incorporation
with
the
Delaware
secretary
of
state,
asserting
that
it
“memorialized”
the
founding
agreement.
But
OpenAI
responded
by
saying
that
Musk’s
complaint
lacked
an
actual
agreement.

The
Microsoft-backed
startup
called
Musk’s
claims
frivolous.
But
in
a
Monday

blog
post
it
said
it
was
asking
the
court
to
designate
the
case
as
complex
and
obtain
dedicated
case
management
for
it,
because
it
involves
AI
and
its
claims
go
back
almost
10
years.

In
his
complaint,
Musk
mentioned
that,
regarding
OpenAI’s
2017
plan
to
establish
a
for-profit
organization,
he
told
Brockman,
Altman
and
OpenAI
co-founder
Ilya
Sutskever
to
“[e]ither
go
do
something
on
your
own
or
continue
with
OpenAI
as
a
nonprofit.”

OpenAI
said
in
its
filing,
dated
March
6,
that
if
the
case
were
to
go
to
discovery,
evidence
would
show
that
Musk
was
on
board
with
the
startup
gaining
for-profit
structure.

Musk
has
his
own
AI
lab
called

X.AI,
which
has
released
a
chatbot
called
Grok
that’s
available
through
X,
formerly
known
as
Twitter,
which
Musk
acquired
in
2022.
The
startup
will
release
Grok’s
code
under
an
open-source
license
this
week,
Musk
said
in
an

X
post
on
Monday.

OpenAI’s
ChatGPT
had
100
million
weekly
users

as
of
November.

“Seeing
the
remarkable
technological
advances
OpenAI
has
achieved,
Musk
now
wants
that
success
for
himself,”
OpenAI
said
in
its
filing.
“So
he
brings
this
action
accusing
Defendants
of
breaching
a
contract
that
never
existed
and
duties
Musk
was
never
owed,
demanding
relief
calculated
to
benefit
a
competitor
to
OpenAI.”

WATCH:

Sam
Altman
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of
directors