The company behind ChatGPT has formally requested Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings and California’s top prosecutor to examine Elon Musk’s business practices, which they characterize as improper and harmful to competition.
The request comes ahead of a major courtroom battle between Musk and OpenAI scheduled to commence this month. Musk filed suit against OpenAI and its chief executive Sam Altman in 2024, claiming the company abandoned its original nonprofit mission as it transitions toward a profit-driven structure.
Musk helped establish OpenAI in 2015 but departed three years later, subsequently creating a competing artificial intelligence venture called xAI that developed the Grok chatbot to rival ChatGPT.
Court documents from August revealed that Musk attempted to recruit Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg to join his consortium’s acquisition attempt of OpenAI in early 2023, though Zuckerberg declined to participate.
In correspondence sent Monday to Attorney General Jennings and California’s Rob Bonta, the artificial intelligence company stated that Musk’s legal action demands more than $100 billion in damages from OpenAI’s nonprofit arm, which would devastate the organization financially.
An Oakland, California judge determined in January that a jury will decide the case during the April trial proceedings.
Jason Kwon, OpenAI’s chief strategy officer, wrote in Monday’s letter that the litigation threatens the company’s mission to develop artificial general intelligence that serves humanity’s broader interests.
Kwon criticized Musk’s legal filings, stating they “suggest that your offices did not thoroughly investigate OpenAI’s plan to recapitalize and merely relied on promises about what OpenAI will do in the future.”
