Elon Musk sues Sam Altman and OpenAI over breach of contract
Elon Musk has filed a law suit against is one-time best friend Sam Altman and OpenAI for the breach of contract, unfair business practices and breach of fiduciary duty. Musk has accused OpenAI of profiting from AGI technology, violating the company’s original agreement.
Musk filed the law suit in the San Francisco court. In the law suit, Musk has stated something that he has been saying for few years now, that OpenAI’s recent collaboration with the Microsoft has breached the original commitment of the company to develop public, open-source artificial general intelligence.
Fixed it pic.twitter.com/KPtYLsJU3h
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 6, 2024
The law suit stated that Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman have violated the OpenAI’s funding mission to develop AI safely and for the benefit of humanity. The billionaire owner of X and SpaceX co-founded OpenAI alongside Altman and Brockman back in 2015 but stepped away from the company in 2018.
Musk disagreed with Altman and Brockman’s plan to turn OpenAI from non-profit to for profit-company and mounted an unsuccessful bid to install himself as CEO before stepping down. In the lawsuit Elon Mush is seeking unspecified damages above $ 105,000.
If the lawsuit is upheld by the San Francisco Superior Court, it will fundamentally reshape how OpenAI and its partner Microsoft do business. The law suit filed said –“OpenAI has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology Company, Microsoft”.
The 35-page law suit is the latest chapter in the fight between the former business partners that has been simmering for years. The suit is the latest twist for a company entangled in the controversy. In November, OpenAI’s board forced out Mr. Altman and said it no longer trusted him to run the company. He was then reinstated in just 5 days after an employee revolt threatened the company’s future.
The Silicon Valley insiders believe that generative AI technology behind ChatGPT is once in a generation technology that could transform the tech industry as web browsers did more than three decades ago. OpenAI has also reacted to the accusations of Elon Musk by releasing blog post which showcases the old emails of Elon Mush that he has sent to OpenAI founders then supporting the idea of turning OpenAI to for-profit firm.
Now the billion dollar question arises as why Elon Musk sued his best friend Altman?
Now what has happened?
Elon Mush has sued OpenAI for breach of contract stating that the company is no abiding to the original mission of creating open source artificial general intelligence. Musk stated that OpenAI is not abiding to its terms of the contract and open source AGI and has entered a deal with Microsoft.
Musk had supported profit firm
OpenAI has issued a blog post showcasing emails between Musk and other co-founders where the former had supported the idea of converting OPenAI to for- Profit Company.
What was Musk’s plan?
Elon Musk highlighted financial crunch in OpenAI and proposed to amalgamate it with Tesla which the other co-founders did not approve of.
Musk left OpenAI
OpenAI shared blog post stating Elon Musk wanted full control in the company and when it was not approved by other co-founders, he left OpenAI in 2018. As per spokesperson of OpenAI-“Musk wanted full control in the company. He wanted majority equity, initial board control and position of CEO. Doing this was against the mission of OpenAI as one person will have the full control”.
Elon Musk and his Twitter deal
Elon Musk always enters in some rift or the other. Before this when Musk has entered a deal to buy Twitter for $ 44 billion but in the end he did not want to finalize it. When the matter went to court, Musk finalized the deal.
Immediately after finalizing the deal, Musk made many changes in Twitter that includes removing of Interim CEO Parag Agarwal and many senior executives. He then made verification badge of Twitter to paid service and changed the name to X. Musk is relentlessly working to earn more revenue from X and thus he launched subscription model. He also started sharing some portion of revenue to the content creators. Musk aims to achieve $30.22 average revenue of X by end of 2028, which was $ 24.83 last year.
