Tech billionaire Elon Musk is seeking to have OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman dismissed from their roles at the artificial intelligence company as part of a lawsuit set to go to trial later this month.
In a legal filing Tuesday, Musk's lawyers outlined the remedies he plans to pursue if a judge and jury find that Altman and OpenAI defrauded him.
Musk sued Altman and OpenAI in 2024, alleging that the artificial intelligence venture he helped found nearly a decade ago had manipulated and misled him into donating $38 million on the understanding that it would remain a nonprofit organization.
"Plaintiff will seek an order removing Altman as a director from the OpenAI nonprofit board and removing both Altman and Brockman as officers of the OpenAI for-profit," Musk’s lawyers said in the filing.
They argued that removing a charity’s officers and directors is a common remedy when those individuals fail to protect or carry out the charity’s public mission.
The filing also said Musk is asking the court to require OpenAI to return to operating as a genuine nonprofit. OpenAI completed a restructuring in October and is now run as a nonprofit holding a 26% stake in its for-profit arm, which includes ChatGPT.
Musk, Altman and others co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit AI lab. Musk left the company in 2018 after unsuccessfully trying to persuade its executives to merge it with Tesla.
In 2023, Musk launched rival AI company xAI, which developed the Grok chatbot and image generator.
On Monday, OpenAI sent a letter to the attorneys general of California and Delaware, urging them to investigate what it described as improper and anti-competitive behavior by Musk and his associates ahead of the trial.
In that letter, OpenAI Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon alleged that Musk had been trying to undermine the company through a series of attacks, including by coordinating efforts with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Musk’s lawyers previously said in a January filing that he should receive up to $134 billion in damages from OpenAI and lead investor Microsoft, describing the sum as wrongful gains tied to his early work and financial backing of the company.
In Tuesday’s filing, however, Musk’s lawyers said he is seeking to have all alleged ill-gotten gains, including Microsoft’s, returned to OpenAI’s charitable arm.
