Technology entrepreneur Elon Musk has filed an injunction with a federal court, asking it to stop OpenAI from transforming itself into a fully for-profit business.

In the filing for a preliminary injunction Nov. 29, Musk, along with his artificial intelligence startup xAI Corp. and former OpenAI board member Shivon Zillis, is also seeking to stop the company from preventing its investors from funding competing AI firms.

It’s the latest salvo from Musk in his ongoing legal feud with OpenAI and its Chief Executive Sam Altman, plus other long-term backers of the company, such as the investor Reid Hoffman and Microsoft Corp.

Musk first sued OpenAI in March, filing a complaint in a San Francisco court that was later withdrawn, before being refiled several months later in a federal court. In that suit, attorneys for Musk, led by Marc Toberoff, complained that OpenAI has violated a number of federal racketeering, or RICO laws.

Last month, Musk’s legal team expanded that complaint, saying that OpenAI and Microsoft were also guilty of breaching antitrust laws because they forced investors to agree that they would not fund rival companies, including xAI.

In the latest filing, Musk’s attorneys argue that OpenAI should be blocked from seeing any business benefits from “wrongfully obtained competitively sensitive information or coordination via the Microsoft-OpenAI board interlocks.”

A spokesperson for OpenAI told TechCrunch that “Musk’s fourth attempt, which again recycles the same baseless complaints, continues to be utterly without merit.”

OpenAI has emerged as the darling of the AI industry thanks to the success of its ChatGPT model, which kicked off an unprecedented era of hype around large language models and their capabilities.

Musk’s xAI is one of the most prominent rivals to OpenAI. Having launched in July 2023, it has announced an alternative chatbot called Grok that’s available for free, with additional premium capabilities for X subscribers. XAI has already raised more than $6 billion at a $24 billion valuation, and it’s now said to be seeking another round that would bring its value to $50 billion.

In the complaint, lawyers for Musk insist that OpenAI and Microsoft are seeking to cement their dominance of the AI industry by “cutting off competitors’ access to investment capital.”

They say that OpenAI is forcing investors in the company to agree to terms that amount to a “group boycott,” limiting xAI’s and other AI firms’ ability to raise investment capital. The lawyers also insist that OpenAI cannot be allowed to “lumber about the marketplace as a Frankenstein, stitched together from whichever corporate forms serve the pecuniary interest of Microsoft.”

Microsoft’s backing of OpenAI has gotten a lot of scrutiny. In January, Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan said her agency will initiate an investigation into the investments and partnerships being formed between cloud services providers and AI developers, naming companies including OpenAI, Microsoft, Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Anthropic PBC.

In response, Microsoft has tried to disentangle itself from OpenAI somewhat, and recently gave up its observer seat on the company’s board of directors, though the FTC has said it will continue to monitor its influence over the AI industry.

OpenAI was launched in 2015 as a nonprofit organization, but four years later it metamorphosed into a “capped-profit” structure, wherein OpenAI’s nonprofit organization became the governing entity of a for-profit subsidiary. Now, OpenAI is trying to transition again to become a fully for-profit public benefit corporation, which would make it much more attractive to investors. As part of that plan, OpenAI intends to retain a separate non-profit entity.

Microsoft has already invested almost $14 billion into OpenAI, but in its fiscal first quarter earnings report in October, it revealed it will post a $1.5 billion loss during the current period because of an unexpected loss relating to the AI company.

That same month, OpenAI closed on its latest blockbuster funding round, raising $6.6 billion at a $157 billion valuation, with participation from Microsoft, Nvidia Corp. and others.

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