Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has unexpectedly withdrawn his lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman. Earlier this year, Musk filed the lawsuit for potential breach of contract, accusing OpenAI of putting profit over people.
This Wednesday the judge was meant to evaluate the case for the first time, but documents from the California court now show that Musk has withdrawn the lawsuit. No official motivation for this has been made public.
Lawsuit: Breach of Contract for Abandoning Founding Mission
Last February, Elon Musk — co-founder of OpenAI — filed a lawsuit, accusing OpenAI of abandoning the firm’s original founding mission, which Musk considered a breach of contract.
According to Musk, the company was meant to be open-source and non-profit, but has now moved away from its altruistic goals and only operates to make profit. In doing so, OpenAI no longer develops artificial intelligence for humanity’s and society’s benefit.
The lawsuit was filed on the basis that this would be a breach of contract. OpenAI refutes this claim and has made a series of emails public that reveal Musk, at least partially, agreed to a closed-source policy.
The relationship between Elon Musk and OpenAI has been tense for a long time already. OpenAI states that Musk tried to connect OpenAI to Tesla in an attempt to have more control in the company. When OpenAI refused to accept, Musk left. In 2018, he withdrew from his position on the board of OpenAI.
Unclear Why Lawsuit is Withdrawn
It is unclear why Musk has chosen to withdraw the lawsuit. On X, he has stated, “more on this later,” but no official reasoning has been shared.
Last year, Musk started his own AI start up called xAI. According to the OpenAI attorneys the lawsuit is a thinly veiled attempt of Musk to improve his own stakes in the AI market, after seeing the enormous success of OpenAI and its chatbot ChatGPT.
Reuters does state that, legally, Musk has the option to file the lawsuit again at a later point, should he wish to do so.
