Elon Musk won a small victory in court on Tuesday in his case against Sam Altman, but the judge was not impressed by the tactics on both sides, blaming them for “playing.”
Calling both sides to be “again too thinly the case”, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers gave Musk’s movement to hit several of Altman’s defenses.
This is the latest in Musk’s ongoing feud with Altman. Moss originally presented the lawsuit Last year in federal court in northern California, accusing Altman and Openai of fraud. Musk claims that he was abused in co -founding and funding in 2015 under the belief that it will remain non -profit.
The complaint claims that Altman has built a secret network of pro-profit Openai affiliates, took over the board of the non-profit, engaged in self-understanding, and diverted the talent and technology of the non-profit for financial gain. The resulting corporate structure, the suit says, is now worth around $ 100 billion.
The archival frames of Musk’s case as “a textbook of altruism against greed.” Notably, Musk dropped a similar lawsuit against Openai earlier last year.
Altman’s team responded by performing 55 claim defenses, introducing new facts not mentioned in Musk’s original complaint. In December Blog postOpenai claimed that when Musk was still with the organization, he actually wanted it to become non -profit with himself at the head.
On Tuesday, Judge Gonzalez Rogers cut this list of 55 defenses, ruling that some were “unrelated, redundant, insufficient or immaterial.” She also criticized Musk’s legal team for trying to strike all defenses, saying they failed to “take the high land.” Instead, the judge thinned along the defenses by 16, leaving 39 in the case. “The court will not waste precious judicial means of playing the parties,” Judge Gonzalez Rogers wrote.
“Openai’s wild entertainment strategy is thin on all,” said Marc Toberoff, Musk’s chief lawyer in the case, in a statement emailed to Gizmodo. “We look forward to processing this case on the actual things: Openai’s ongoing fraud and complete betrayal of its charitable mission.”
Lawyers representing Altman did not immediately respond to a request for Gizmodo’s comment.
This is not the first time the judge seemed unimpressed with the case. Business Insidious reported In February, Judge Gonzalez Rogers expressed doubt about Musk’s claim about “unrepeatable damage”, saying, “I have billionaires against billionaires.”
A selection of a jury for the case is scheduled to start on March 30th.
Musk helped start Openai with Altman and others back in 2015, but he left in 2018 after disagreements about where the company was headed. Since then, he has launched his own AI company for profit, Xai, to go head-to-head with Openai. The rivalry between them only intensified, even stretching into the world of politics.
Earlier this year, Musk retired from his role at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and gained public back and forth with President Donald Trump on social media.
Around the same time, Altman joined Trump for A long one-one meeting. Shortly thereafter, Trump publicly praised Altman’s AI infrastructure efforts, which Musk was not afraid to criticize.
