Elon Musk is having another go at suing OpenAI and Sam Altman — here's why

Elon Musk filed a new lawsuit against OpenAI, claiming cofounders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman "manipulated" him by playing on his AI safety concerns.

• Elon Musk is once again suing OpenAI, this time claiming he was "deceived" into cofounding the firm.
• Musk's lawyers claim Altman and Brockman "manipulated" him by playing on his concerns about AI safety.
• Musk first took legal action against OpenAI in March on similar grounds but dropped the suit in June.

Elon Musk is having another go at suing OpenAI and cofounders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman.

In the new lawsuit filed on Monday, Musk's lawyers argued that the OpenAI executives "deceived" Musk into cofounding the company by playing on his concerns about the existential risks AI poses in what they describe as a "textbook tale of altruism versus greed."

Musk's lawyers also claimed that the billionaire was "assiduously manipulated" by Altman and Brockman into cofounding OpenAI, a nonprofit that would focus on building AI safely with an open approach for the benefit of humanity. But the lawyers claimed it was "all hot-air philanthropy—the hook for Altman's long con."

"After Musk lent his name to the venture, invested significant time, tens of millions of dollars in seed capital, and recruited top AI scientists for OpenAI, Inc., Musk and the non-profit's namesake objective were betrayed by Altman and his accomplices. The perfidy and deceit are of Shakespearean proportions," Musk's lawyers argued.

The lawsuit also stated that Musk was told OpenAI would hire leading scientists to compete with Google's DeepMind in a race to build artificial general intelligence (AGI). However, the lawyers argue that the company created a for-profit entity once it approached creating AGI.

Altman, Musk, and Brockman founded OpenAI in December 2015 as a nonprofit research lab. Musk departed in 2018, but his lawyers said in the first lawsuit that he "continued to make contributions to OpenAI" until mid-September 2020.

OpenAI now describes itself as a "capped-profit" company. In 2019, it created OpenAI LP, a for-profit and nonprofit hybrid. In a blog post at the time, OpenAI said the idea was for investors and employees to get a "capped return" if it successfully achieved its mission.

Musk's lawyers describe the transition to a hybrid structure as a shift to "a vehicle for Altman and his partners' self-enrichment" which they argue is evident in its partnership with Microsoft.

Musk set up his own AI firm, xAI, in 2023. The mission of the for-profit company is to "advance our collective understanding of the universe."

Musk first sued OpenAI and cofounders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman in March and accused the company of jeopardizing its nonprofit mission by partnering with Microsoft. OpenAI responded to the suit by calling it "incoherent" and "contradictory" and published emails between OpenAI executives and Musk in a bid to dismiss his claims.

Musk then dropped his lawsuit against OpenAI, Altman, and Brockman in June, just a day before a judge was set to consider the case's future during a hearing.

OpenAI, Altman and Brockman didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider, sent outside normal working hours.