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ChatGPT creator OpenAI fires back at Elon Musk over ‘altruism versus greed’ lawsuit
The lawsuit has not dampened investors’ interest in OpenAI, which recently raised US$6.6 billion at a US$157 billion valuation
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ChatGPT creator OpenAI has accused Elon Musk of harassment in a legal fight that is unfolding, as the Microsoft-backed start-up weighs a plan to shift to a for-profit business model.
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Not quite two months after he abandoned his first suit against OpenAI, Musk filed a complaint in August claiming that co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman manipulated him into investing in the start-up, which at the start was a non-profit, and then enriched themselves by draining it of its prized technology and assets.
Musk’s complaint describes the OpenAI saga as “a textbook tale of altruism versus greed”.
OpenAI currently has a more complicated structure that includes a for-profit subsidiary – which was created in 2019 to help fund the high costs of artificial intelligence (AI) model development, and it has since drawn billions in outside investment from Microsoft and others.
“The suit is the latest move in Elon Musk’s increasingly blusterous campaign to harass OpenAI for his own competitive advantage,” Altman and the company said in a court filing on Tuesday asking a federal judge in Oakland, California, to dismiss Musk’s complaint.
Musk – also the chief executive at Tesla, SpaceX and xAI – did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent to his social media platform X.
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