Musk amends OpenAI lawsuit, seeks damages for nonprofit and Altman's removal

Elon Musk has amended his lawsuit against OpenAI to request that any damages awarded be given to OpenAI's nonprofit arm rather than to him personally, according to court filings. He is also seeking the removal of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman from the nonprofit's board of directors. The amended complaint was filed ahead of an upcoming trial where Musk is suing OpenAI over its transition from a nonprofit to a for-profit company. He claims the change violated the company's original mission and defrauded him as an early donor who served as co-chair of OpenAI's founding group. Musk is seeking approximately $150 billion in damages related to OpenAI's current valuation. The lawsuit characterizes OpenAI as having become a closed-source subsidiary of Microsoft following its commercial partnerships and structural changes. OpenAI has defended its transition, arguing it was necessary to secure the funding required to develop advanced AI systems. The organization has maintained that it continues to pursue its mission of ensuring artificial general intelligence benefits humanity. The case highlights ongoing tensions between the original nonprofit ethos of AI safety research and the capital-intensive reality of building frontier AI models.