Elon Musk drops lawsuit accusing OpenAI of betraying founding mission

Musk had accused start-up of setting ‘aflame’ the founding agreement to develop AI for the good of humanity.

Elon Musk has dropped his lawsuit accusing OpenAI and its co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman of reneging on the startup’s pledge to develop artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity.

Lawyers in the United States representing Musk, on Tuesday asked a California judge to dismiss the suit, court filings showed.

No reason was provided for the application to dismiss the suit.

Musk in February filed a suit claiming that ChatGPT had set “aflame” its founding agreement to put the good of humanity ahead of profit-seeking when it signed an investment deal with Microsoft.

“To this day, OpenAI Inc’s website continues to profess that its charter is to ensure that AGI ‘benefits all of humanity’,” Musk claimed in the suit.

“In reality, however, OpenAI Inc has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft.”

OpenAI described Musk’s complaint as “contrived”, arguing the company had no founding agreement or contract of any kind with Musk.

The California-based startup also accused Musk of seeking to capitalise on its success after seeing the “remarkable technological advances” it had achieved.

Musk helped co-found OpenAI in 2015, before exiting the company three years later.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO last year launched his own AI startup, xAI.

Last month, the OpenAI rival announced that it had raised $6bn from backers, including venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and Saudi Arabian investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.