Elon Musk’s Lawsuit Against OpenAI Faces Setback, But Judge Raises Concerns Over For-Profit Shift

Elon Musk’s Lawsuit Against OpenAI Faces Setback, But Judge Raises Concerns Over For-Profit Shift

Elon Musk lost the latest battle in his lawsuit against OpenAI this week, but a federal judge appears to have given Musk — and others who oppose OpenAI’s for-profit conversion — reasons to be hopeful. Image:Michael Kovac / Vanity Fair / Getty Images Musk’s suit against OpenAI, which also names Microsoft and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as defendants, accuses OpenAI of abandoning its nonprofit mission to ensure its AI research benefits all humanity. OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit in 2015 but converted to a “capped-profit” structure in 2019, and now seeks to restructure once more into a public benefit corporation. Musk had sought a preliminary injunction to halt OpenAI’s transition to a for-profit. On Tuesday, a federal judge in Northern California, U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, denied Musk’s request — yet expressed some jurisprudential concerns about OpenAI’s planned conversion. Judge Rogers said in her ruling denying the injunction that “significant and irreparable harm is…