Once again, Elon Musk has sued his OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman and the company’s president Greg Brockman for breach of contract and fraud. According to a report by Deadline, the lawsuit reads, “The fraud and deceit are of Shakespearean proportions.” The suit was filed in the Northern District of California. In the filing, Musk has accused Altman of focusing OpenAI’s focus on “the self-enrichment of Altman and his partners.”

The complaint alleges that as OpenAI’s technology approached artificial general intelligence, Altman and “his associates” changed their approach. It claims that OpenAI’s focus shifted from its stated charitable mission — “to benefit the public and protect humanity” — to self-enrichment for Altman and his associates. The filing highlights Elon Musk’s long-standing argument that when OpenAI partnered with Microsoft, it became a profit-making OpenAI affiliate, and its recent valuation has hit $100 billion.

“As OpenAI’s technology approached AGI (artificial general intelligence), Altman and his associates flipped the script,” the complaint reportedly reads. “OpenAI’s focus shifted from its advertised charitable purpose — to benefit the public and protect humanity — to a means of self-enrichment for Altman and his associates. This is most clearly evident in OpenAI’s partnership with Microsoft and the proliferation of an opaque web of profit-making OpenAI affiliates, recently valued at $100 billion,” it further claims.

The suit reflects a clash between “altruism versus greed,” casting Musk as a defender against the potential risks of AI in the hands of prominent tech figures like Altman. “This case is about much more than a $100 billion start-up; the future of AI and AGI hangs in the balance,” a lawyer in the case said in a statement to Deadline.

In this multi-indemnity complaint, Elon Musk, the head of Tesla and X, is demanding a jury trial.

This is not déjà vu

This is not the first time this has happened. In March this year, Elon Musk launched legal action against Sam Altman and OpenAI, accusing them of breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, and engaging in unfair business practices by prioritising Microsoft’s profits over the good of humanity. The suit was filed in a San Francisco court. It reiterates Musk’s argument now being made: OpenAI’s recent partnership with Microsoft has undermined its initial mission of creating open-source artificial general intelligence for the public benefit.

In the suit, Musk seeks to prevent OpenAI, its chairman Gregory Brockman, CEO Sam Altman — who are named as co-defendants — and Microsoft from benefiting financially from the company’s artificial general intelligence technology.

here is the reference

Elon Musk and Sam Altman founded OpenAI in 2015. In recent years, Elon Musk has frequently used social media to criticize OpenAI’s shift toward the commercialization of AI. Earlier this year, Musk tweeted that “OpenAI was created as an open-source, non-profit organization to balance Google, but has now become a closed-source, profit-driven entity effectively controlled by Microsoft. This is not what I wanted,” reflecting his dissatisfaction with the organization’s new direction.

The roots of this disagreement go back even further. Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk reveals that he proposed merging OpenAI with Tesla – a suggestion that was strongly opposed by Sam Altman and other board members. Musk’s enthusiasm for AI led him to launch projects such as Neuralink, Optimus, and Dojo, and his goal was to integrate AI technology into Tesla vehicles. His commitment to AI innovation soured his relationship with OpenAI, resulting in his exit from the organization in 2018 after his proposal was rejected.

At the same time, Musk initiated the formation of a rival AI team to develop autonomous Tesla vehicles, including computer vision expert Andrej Karpathy from OpenAI. Eventually, OpenAI launched a commercial division and introduced the widely used ChatGPT in 2023.