American business tycoon Elon Musk recently dropped his lawsuit against American AI research organization OpenAI and its Chief Executive Sam Altman, Reuters reported, citing a filing with the San Francisco Superior Court last week.
OpenAI lawsuit dismissed
In hindsight, Elon Musk accused OpenAI and its leader, Sam Altman, of abandoning its not-for-profit and open-source founding missions.
Interestingly, a recent filing revealed that Elon Musk and his attorneys asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit without prejudice. This considered, the American billionaire still has the choice to refile the lawsuit in the future.
For context, Musk called for the judge to mandate OpenAI to offer its research and technology to the public in the original court filing. The lawsuit seeks to prevent OpenAI from offering significant financial benefits to investor Microsoft with its innovations, including the popular GPT-4.
Dismissal remains unclear
The filing did not disclose the reasons why Musk decided to withdraw the lawsuit against OpenAI, which he helped establish in 2015.
It is worth noting that the withdrawal occurred just before the Superior Court judge’s set hearing for OpenAI’s bid to dismiss the case on Wednesday.
“Seeing the remarkable technological advances OpenAI has achieved, Musk now wants that success for himself.”
OpenAI attorneys indicated in a court filing against Musk’s lawsuit
OpenAI also contended that Musk had only filed a case to advance and promote his own AI startup, xAI. It further outlined that Musk has “incoherent claims” for the lawsuit.
xAI launch
Elon Musk established xAI in 2023 and later launched its inaugural product, the Grok language model. In March 2024, xAI formally open-sourced Grok. At the time, Musk was bashing OpenAI, even asking what the “Open” refers to in its name.
In April, Musk’s AI startup introduced its first-ever visual processing model with Grok, dubbed Grok 1.5v.
Interestingly, Musk renounced January reports claiming that xAI was raising $6 billion in capital amid his criticisms against OpenAI for its profit-driven structure. However, it declared the successful attainment of $6 billion in Series B funding in May 2024.
Musk’s decision to withdraw the lawsuit marks an end to a months-long legal battle between co-founders of the AI startup.
