Elon Musk has withdrawn his lawsuit against OpenAI and the company's CEO, Sam Altman, for allegedly breaking their "founding agreement," which stated that Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI should be developed for the "benefit of humanity." For-profit this happens the day before the trial starts. Musk did not provide any justification for his decision to dismiss the case.

Timeline of the case's events 

Elon Musk's Legal Action 

Musk filed the lawsuit on February 29, 2024. It was claimed that OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman, and co-founder Greg Brockman, also a founding member, had breached the terms of a 2015 "founding agreement". According to reports, the agreement defines two key principles and states that OpenAI

(a) shall not be a non-profit business seeking to maximize shareholder profits, but shall be a non-profit business creating AGI for the good of humanity; And

(b) will not keep its technology locked and hidden for exclusive economic purposes; Instead, it will be open source, weighted only by anti-security factors.

The lawsuit was reportedly memorialized in OpenAI's Certificate of Formation, which promises that the company will strive to make its technology open source whenever possible and that the resulting technology will benefit the public. The corporation was not established for the personal benefit of any individual.

Musk's Claims

Musk said Altman deviated from OpenAI's "original mission and historic practice" of open-sourcing its technology by withholding the internal design of the company's core model GPT-4 from all but its partner Microsoft. He further asserted that the reason for the cover-up was financial motivation. The lawsuit also criticized OpenAI's collaboration with Microsoft, claiming that GPT-4 violated public benefit principles because it was developed with Musk's help and was purely for "de facto Microsoft Proprietary Algorithm" human benefit purpose. 

It was argued that because GPT-4 is an AGI algorithm, it is not covered by Microsoft's exclusive agreement with OpenAI, which exclusively covers the company's pre-AGI technologies.

ChatGPT is Integrated into iOS, iPadOS, and macOS by Apple

The lawsuit further claimed that OpenAI's new board, established after Altman was fired and then reappointed in 2023, was incompetent to decide whether the company had developed artificial general intelligence. (AGI) or not because it lacked "sufficient AI expertise". Musk further asserted that allowing Microsoft, a publicly for-profit company, to hold a seat on OpenAI, Inc.'s board of directors is against the non-profit principles of the founding agreement.

Instead of building AGI for the good of humanity, under its current board it's not just building it to maximize profits for Microsoft, it's improving it. Its technology, including GPT-4, is primarily closed source to support Microsoft's special business objectives, the statement said.

The Legal Reaction from OpenAI and its Critiques of Musk 

The Founding Agreement was described as "a myth Musk claims an unearned claim to the fruits of an enterprise he initially supported, then abandoned, then saw succeed without him" in OpenAI's legal response to Musk's case.

During his early days at OpenAI, Musk advocated for a nonprofit organization and even proposed a merger with Tesla, the AI ​​startup said. In the case, it was said that Musk "now wants this success for himself, given the remarkable technological progress that OpenAI has achieved." He also mentioned the failure of Musk's AI business, xAI, which he claimed would benefit from OpenAI's research.

During his time at OpenAI, Musk advocated for the nonprofit organization and even proposed a merger with Tesla, the AI ​​startup said in a blog post. As the only way to "hope to hold a candle to Google," he said, Musk plans to tie OpenAI to "Tesla as his cash cow."

He added that Musk and the other OpenAI co-founders had previously realized that funding the development of artificial intelligence would require a profitable company.

Additionally, he used an email exchange between Musk and OpenAI Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever to support his case for keeping GPT-4 closed-source, stating that “everything by open-sourcing (sic), we make it easy for an unscrupulous person to access a huge amount of hardware to build an insecure AI, which will hardly experience take-off."

Elon Musk Withdraws Lawsuit against OpenAI

Billionaire businessman Elon Musk tried to bring his lawsuit against OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, to the ouster of its CEO Sam Altman on Tuesday. In the case, Musk accused Altman and OpenAI of abandoning the startup's initial goal of creating artificial intelligence for the good of humanity rather than for financial gain.

According to filings in San Francisco Superior Court, Musk's attorneys requested that the February action be dismissed by a California state court without providing an explanation for the change.

At a hearing this Wednesday, a Supreme Court judge was set to consider OpenAI's request to dismiss the lawsuit.

OpenAI and a lawyer representing Musk were not immediately responded to requests for comment.

Musk was able to resubmit his lawsuit at a later date because it was dismissed without prejudice.

Musk's long-standing criticism of OpenAI, a company he co-founded and later received multibillion-dollar backing from Microsoft, came in the wake of the lawsuit.

Musk founded his artificial intelligence startup xAI in July last year. In May, the company raised $6 billion in Series B funding, valuing the company at $24 billion after taking out debt.

According to the lawsuit, Musk was approached by Altman and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman to create an open-source, nonprofit organization. However, the 2015 plan is now primarily focused on making a profit.

According to the lawsuit, OpenAI "set fire to the founding agreement" last year when it unveiled GPT-4, its most powerful language model.

In the case, Musk requested that a judge order OpenAI to stop exploiting its assets—including GPT-4—for the financial benefit of Microsoft and other parties, and to make its technology and research publicly available. In a court filing, OpenAI claimed that the action was based on illogical claims and that Musk was manipulating it to further his personal AI goals.

"Given the remarkable technological progress OpenAI has achieved, Musk now wants this success for himself," OpenAI's lawyers said.

Within the parameters of the complaint, Musk said in the April filing that OpenAI is "attempting to advance arguments based on disputed facts."