Musk gains support in lawsuit over OpenAI’s corporate structure

Elon Musk’s legal challenge against OpenAI has received new backing from prominent tech investors and AI researchers. According to reporting by Gerrit De Vynck for The Washington Post, the lawsuit aims to prevent OpenAI from transitioning from a nonprofit to a for-profit entity. Two tech investors, Antonio Gracias and Gavin Baker, filed sworn declarations claiming OpenAI required potential investors to avoid backing competitor companies, including Musk’s xAI. Geoffrey Hinton, a Nobel Prize-winning AI researcher, supported Musk’s position through a friend-of-the-court brief filed by tech advocacy group Encode. Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings has also entered the discussion, stating she is monitoring OpenAI’s plans for compliance with state law.

The dispute centers on OpenAI’s founding mission as a nonprofit dedicated to benefiting humanity versus its current direction toward a profit-focused structure. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has publicly disputed Musk’s claims and stated that investors in competitors would be restricted from receiving special company information. The company recently raised $6.6 billion in funding at a $157 billion valuation. Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 before leaving in 2018, now runs competing AI company xAI, which recently secured $6 billion in funding from various investors including Morgan Stanley.

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