Elon Musk, the Silicon Valley mogul who never met a courtroom he didn’t like, has dropped his lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, in what can only be described as a hit and run with legal paperwork. The billionaire had accused the company he co-founded of abandoning its original not-for-profit, humanity-saving ambitions in favor of something more akin to a highly profitable robot brain with a great PR team.
The lawsuit, filed in February in a California court, had claimed that OpenAI’s partnership with Microsoft turned the research lab into what Musk called a “de facto subsidiary” of the tech giant. Because nothing says artificial general intelligence quite like bundling with Microsoft Excel. Musk, always the champion of altruistic intentions wherever they conveniently align with his interests, had originally said that OpenAI was supposed to be open source and for the benefit of humanity. Instead, he argued, it had become a closed-door, for-profit enterprise chasing the lucrative scent of generative AI hype like a Silicon Valley truffle pig.
But just as suddenly as it appeared, the legal standoff has vanished. On Tuesday, Musk’s legal team filed for a dismissal of the case without prejudice, meaning they could return for round two should the mood or market conditions inspire further litigation. OpenAI, which had naturally responded with a motion to toss the case out like last week’s crypto fad, now finds itself mercifully free of another Muskian sideshow, at least for now.
While neither Musk nor his lawyers offered a public explanation for the retreat, it might have something to do with the dual pressures of running multiple space companies, reinventing transportation, posting memes, and maintaining a steady stream of provocations on social media. OpenAI, for its part, declined to gloat, possibly too busy feeding vast quantities of data into its neural networks to care.
Musk, who left OpenAI’s board in 2018 citing potential conflicts of interest with his own AI ventures including xAI, has remained a vocal critic of the company’s commercial evolution. But even AI gets a break once in a while, apparently, and for now the courtroom battle has ended not with a bang but with a very quiet legal whisper.
No word yet on whether Musk plans to sue gravity next, but never rule anything out.