Elon Musk Loses Again to OpenAI as Judge Dismisses xAI Trade Secret Lawsuit

A federal choose has dismissed xAI’s commerce secret lawsuit towards OpenAI, discovering that Elon Musk’s AI firm—which he’s since folded into SpaceX—failed to indicate that the ChatGPT maker improperly obtained confidential data associated to its Grok chatbot.

In a court docket order on Monday, U.S. District Decide Rita Lin granted OpenAI’s movement to dismiss with out go away to amend, concluding that xAI didn’t show OpenAI inspired a former xAI engineer to reveal commerce secrets and techniques throughout the recruiting course of.

“xAI insufficiently pled inducement within the prior grievance as a result of it supplied no nonconclusory allegations permitting an inexpensive inference ‘that OpenAI advised or inspired’ xAI’s former staff to exfiltrate its confidential data,” the order stated.

The choice is the second defeat that Musk—who co-founded OpenAI earlier than departing in 2018—has suffered in his ongoing feud with OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman.



Final month, a federal jury rejected Musk’s $150 billion lawsuit alleging that OpenAI, Altman, and co-founder Greg Brockman deserted the group’s founding nonprofit mission by shifting towards a business construction and deepening its relationship with Microsoft.

This newest lawsuit centered on a presentation Xuechen Li, a former xAI engineer, gave whereas being recruited by OpenAI, which xAI alleged the ChatGPT developer focused due to his work on Grok 4’s reinforcement studying and post-training techniques. The grievance accused OpenAI of knowingly in search of confidential details about these efforts.

Lin rejected that argument, writing that “merely asking Li to debate his earlier work—a routine a part of the hiring course of—doesn’t permit a believable inference that OpenAI induced Li to disclose something confidential or secret about that work.” She added that accepting xAI’s concept might “doubtlessly expose employers to legal responsibility any time they inquire a few candidate’s previous work.”

The choose additionally discovered that xAI failed to indicate OpenAI knew or ought to have recognized Li disclosed commerce secrets and techniques throughout the presentation.

“These allegations are inadequate to help an inexpensive inference that OpenAI knew or ought to have recognized that Li disclosed xAI commerce secrets and techniques throughout his presentation,” Lin wrote. “It’s not clear how a lot element Li shared about xAI’s reinforcement studying methods. Equally, whereas xAI doesn’t allege that Li truly displayed the slide deck throughout his presentation, even assuming he did, the extent of element contained within the slides stays unclear.”

The choice additionally comes as Musk grew to become the world’s first trillionaire following SpaceX’s record-breaking IPO, which valued the corporate at round $1.77 trillion and cemented the rocket firm’s place as one of many world’s most precious corporations.

SpaceX (SPCX) shares continued to soar Monday amid a broader market surge following the announcement of a ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran, rising almost 20% by shut to complete the day at $192.50. That provides the agency a valuation above $2.5 trillion.