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On Monday local time, the world's richest man Elon Musk once again launched a "revenge lawsuit".It sued OpenAI and its two founders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, in the federal court in Northern California, claiming that the two had committed "conspiracy to extort" against Musk, and asked the court to declare the large model license provided by OpenAI to Microsoft invalid.

Image source: Indictment

The latest lawsuit alleges that as early as 2015, before the founding of OpenAI, Altman and Brockman deliberately tried to please and deceive Musk to jointly establish the original intention and organizational structure of sharing AI technology with all mankind."Altman and his associates engaged in a 'Shakespearean' campaign of betrayal and deception."

"After Musk invested his reputation, a great deal of his time, and tens of millions of dollars in seed funding into OpenAI, recruiting top scientists, he was betrayed by Altman and his associates," the indictment reads.

Musk sued, saying that by working with Microsoft,Altman built an opaque network of OpenAI’s for-profit subsidiaries, engaged in rampant self-dealing, seized control of the board, and systematically drained the nonprofit of valuable technology and talent.

Image source: Screenshot of CNBC report

In the lawsuit, Musk requested that the defendants "establish a constructive trust for the proceeds, property, and assets obtained through improper means" and "request a judicial ruling that GPT-4o and next-generation AI models constitute general artificial intelligence, and therefore exceed the scope of the license granted by OpenAI to Microsoft."

In response to Musk's lawsuit, OpenAl publicly exposed emails between the founders in March this year, accusing Musk of knowing and agreeing that it was necessary to create a for-profit entity to obtain resources for training AI, and that AI could not be fully open to the public. OpenAl countered that Musk's real motive for talking about morality was to advance his own business interests.

The industry believes that this case may become an important test for OpenAI's rapid development.

In fact, on February 29 of this year, Musk sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman for breach of contract, but withdrew the lawsuit in June.

Specifically, the indictment at the time showed that Musk accused OpenAI of violating the "Founding Agreement" when OpenAI was founded in 2023.

The "Founding Agreement" states that OpenAI is a "non-profit organization that develops general artificial intelligence and aims to benefit humanity, rather than a for-profit organization that maximizes shareholder interests"; at the same time, "it will open source code and will not keep its technology confidential for private commercial reasons except for security reasons."

Based on the Establishment Agreement, Musk invested most of the founding capital in the first few years and played a crucial role in recruiting chief scientist Ilya Sutskever from Google's DeepMind for OpenAI.

Public information shows that OpenAI was first established as a non-profit organization in 2015. Musk is one of the main founders of OpenAI and also one of its important investors.

On March 5, OpenAI released an official statement on its official website saying that the company firmly opposes all false accusations made by Musk and will take legal action to protect the company's rights and interests.

OpenAI attached a copy of internal emails between OpenAI executives and Musk from 2015 to 2018 to the statement. In the statement, OpenAI revealed that at the end of 2017, OpenAI and Musk decided that the next task was to create a for-profit entity. Musk hopes to obtain a majority stake and initial board control and serve as CEO.

However, the two sides failed to reach a consensus on the profit terms.OpenAI believes that any individual's absolute control over OpenAI will go against the company's original intention and mission. In the end, halfway through the negotiations, Musk took back all the funds.