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Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, has sued OpenAI for the second time. The venture alleges that the creator of ChatGPT is poaching workers to steal trade secrets and gain a competitive advantage in the world of artificial intelligence.
The lawsuit was filed in a California federal court on Wednesday, alleging that OpenAI is intentionally targeting xAI workers. It states that this is being done to steal confidential information, such as code behind the company’s Grok chatbot.
According to the complaint, OpenAI was accused of “waging a coordinated, unfair, and unlawful campaign” by luring away engineers and executives. The filing argues that the company is specifically seeking individuals with knowledge of xAI’s key technologies and business plans and poaching them.
This includes employees who are aware of the source code, data center strategies, and operational practices that give xAI a competitive edge. The lawsuit claims that OpenAI induced former employees to breach their agreements and disclose confidential information.
“By hook or crook, OpenAI evidently will do anything when threatened by a better innovator, including looting and misappropriating the technical achievements, source code, and business plans of xAI,” the firm stated in its complaint.
The case highlights three individuals: former xAI engineer Xuechen Li, another employee named Jimmy Fraiture, and an unnamed senior finance executive. These people allegedly carried sensitive trade secrets with them to OpenAI.
xAI had previously sued Li separately for stealing proprietary details about Grok and transferring them to OpenAI. The company claims that while probing her departure, it discovered a ‘deeply troubling pattern’ of systematic poaching by its rival.
The new lawsuit is the latest chapter in Musk’s complicated and frequently acrimonious history with OpenAI. Musk co-founded the company with Sam Altman and Greg Brockman in 2015, but then pulled out, claiming that the venture had lost its non-profit intentions.
Elon Musk has consistently criticized OpenAI for only seeking to make profits instead of its initial vow of creating AI ‘for the benefit of humanity.’ Earlier this year, Musk sued OpenAI for supposedly becoming a ‘closed-source de facto subsidiary of Microsoft.’ OpenAI has retaliated by countersuing him, charging Musk with harassment.
Only last month, Musk’s artificial intelligence venture lodged another lawsuit against OpenAI and Apple. This time, the company claimed that the App Store rankings unduly favored ChatGPT over xAI’s Grok chatbot.
Also Read: Musk Bets on Open-Source Grok 2.5 to Compete in AI Race with Google
New litigation adds yet another layer of complexity to the competition between Musk and OpenAI. xAI is swiftly deploying data centres and pushing Grok updates to release, while Altman’s company continues to dominate the generative AI space. The judgment that arises from this legal action could alter the competitive dynamics in one of the world’s fastest-growing technologies forever.
