SAN FRANCISCO – The California attorney general’s office declined to join a lawsuit by Mr Elon Musk against OpenAI, the agency wrote in a letter made public on April 15, saying it did not see how his action serves the public interest.

Mr Musk, a co-founder of the ChatGPT maker, is in a feud with his co-founder Sam Altman, the current OpenAI chief executive over the firm’s future.

OpenAI wants to remove its non-profit board as its controlling power in exchange for a valuable equity stake. Mr Musk’s suit argues that this would threaten the non-profit’s mission and he asked the state to join the lawsuit.

In the letter dated April 14, the attorney general said Mr Musk had not adequately shown that doing so would benefit the public, and that Mr Musk appeared to want to use OpenAI’s charitable assets for his own purposes.

In February, a Musk-led consortium made an unsolicited US$97 billion (S$127.6 billion) bid for control of OpenAI which is based in California.

Entities including Meta and a group of philanthropic leaders have written to the attorney general urging it to stop OpenAI’s transition.

OpenAI has argued that it needs to remove the non-profit’s controlling role in order to raise funds from investors. To secure a US$40 billion fundraising round, the company must complete its transition by end 2025.

The non-profit will retain a stake in OpenAI that will become increasingly valuable as the company grows, providing resources to carry out its mission, the company argues. Mr Musk and Mr Altman co-founded ChatGPT maker OpenAI in 2015, but Mr Musk left before the company became a technology star.

In 2024, Mr Musk, who is also the chief executive of electric carmaker Tesla, sued OpenAI and Mr Altman, accusing OpenAI of straying from its founding mission to develop AI for the good of humanity.

OpenAI and Mr Altman have denied the allegations. The two parties are set to begin a jury trial in spring 2026.

Mr Musk created his own AI firm, xAI, in 2023, and Mr Altman alleges that Mr Musk has been trying to slow down a competitor. REUTERS

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