Elon Musk is seeking to have Sam Altman removed as CEO of OpenAI, and Greg Brockman as chairman of the artificial intelligence company, as part of a lawsuit set to go to court later this month, CNBC reports.
In a legal document filed Tuesday, Musk's lawyers detailed the specific steps their client is seeking if a judge and jury find Altman and OpenAI defrauded Musk, the world's richest man.
Musk sued OpenAI in 2024, as well as Altman personally, alleging that the AI company he helped found nearly a decade ago was “seriously manipulated” and “misled” into donating $38 million. Musk claims that OpenAI has not followed through on its original commitment to remain a nonprofit organization.
Since then, the two sides have engaged in a public war of words, in addition to their legal dispute and growing trade rivalry.
“Plaintiff will seek an order removing Altman as a director on the board of the nonprofit OpenAI and removing both Altman and Brockman from their leadership roles in the commercial entity OpenAI,” Musk's lawyers said in the filing Tuesday.
“Removing the leadership of a charity is a common measure when those individuals fail to protect or fulfill its public mission,” the lawyers note.
OpenAI pokes fun at Musk after moving his lawyers
Musk is also asking the court to force OpenAI to return to operating as a nonprofit, according to the filing. The company last October completed a restructuring and is now managed as a non-profit organization holding a 26% stake in its commercial division, which develops and manages the most well-known product developed since its inception, the ChatGPT chatbot.
Jury selection in that case is scheduled to begin on April 27.
OpenAI said in a message published on X that Musk is “pretending to change his position on attacking the nonprofit OpenAI foundation.”
“The truth is that this case has always been about Elon's desire to get more power and more money for what he wants,” OpenAI said. “His lawsuit is nothing more than a campaign of harassment, fueled by hubris, jealousy and a desire to slow down a competitor,” the quoted source continued.
Musk, Altman and others co-founded OpenAI as a nonprofit artificial intelligence lab in 2015. Musk left OpenAI in 2018 after trying to convince management to merge the organization with Tesla, his electric vehicle company.
Musk began his lawsuits against OpenAI after launching his own AI company
In 2023, Musk launched a rival company called xAI, which meanwhile developed the Grok chatbot. In February, SpaceX acquired xAI in a record deal that valued the combined entity at $1.25 trillion.
SpaceX recently filed confidential documents with the US Securities and Exchange Commission with a view to a stock exchange listing. SpaceX is considered the world's most valuable unlisted company, with analysts expecting the initial public offering to set a record for the New York Stock Exchange.
Musk's lawyers previously said in a legal document filed in January that their client should receive up to $134 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, the AI company's main investor. The lawyers said the amount reflected “ill-gotten gains” as a result of Musk's initial contribution to OpenAI and financial support for the company.
In the document filed on Tuesday, Musk's lawyers said he is seeking “the return of all ill-gotten gains, including Microsoft's, to the OpenAI charity.”
