Elon Musk has stepped up his long-running legal battle against OpenAI by demanding the ouster of CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman as part of his ongoing lawsuit. In a court filing on Tuesday, Musk’s lawyers stated that if the court rules in his favour, they will seek a formal order to remove Altman as a director from OpenAI’s nonprofit board and strip both Altman and Brockman of their officer positions in the company’s for-profit arm.
Musk’s new demands in the lawsuit
Musk is also pushing for OpenAI to revert to its original nonprofit status and return all “ill-gotten gains,” including those received by Microsoft, to the nonprofit entity. The filing states that Musk wants the court to unwind OpenAI’s transition to a for-profit structure, which was completed in late 2025.
The case, which was filed in 2024, accuses Altman and OpenAI of defrauding Musk by deviating from the company’s original founding mission.
Musk, who was a co-founder, left OpenAI in 2018, claiming that he donated nearly $38 million based on assurances that the organisation would remain a nonprofit focused on developing AI for the benefit of humanity rather than profit.
OpenAI responds
OpenAI responded strongly to the latest filing, calling Musk’s lawsuit “nothing more than a harassment campaign” driven by “ego, jealousy, and a desire to slow down a competitor.” The company stated that Musk is “pretending to change his tune” and that the case has always been about gaining more power and money.
“Today, at the eleventh hour, Elon lodged a court filing pretending to change his tune about attacking the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation,” wrote OpenAI.
“The truth is that this case has always been about Elon generating more power and more money for what he wants. Having increasingly realised that his attempt to damage the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation rests on a baseless legal case, Elon is once again trying to change the narrative and save face as the trial approaches. His lawsuit remains nothing more than a harassment campaign that’s driven by ego, jealousy and a desire to slow down a competitor,” added the company.
Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit but departed in 2018 after disagreements, including a failed attempt to merge it with Tesla. He later founded xAI, OpenAI’s direct competitor, which developed the Grok AI models.
Sam Altman is yet to issue a formal response to the matter.