OpenAI will continue to face legal action from Elon Musk, his lawyer has stated, despite OpenAI’s recent announcement.

Reuters reported that Musk’s lawyer, Marc Toberoff said on Monday that the world’s richest man plans to proceed with his highly watched lawsuit against OpenAI.

This came despite OpenAI backtracking over its decision made in September 2024 to restructure itself into “for-profit benefit corporation”.

But on Monday OpenAI’s board of directors said they had now made the decision for the non-profit to stay in control of the AI pioneer.

“Bad faith”

“Nothing in today’s announcement changes the fact that OpenAI will still be developing closed-source AI for the benefit of Altman, his investors, and Microsoft,” Toberoff was quoted by Reuters as saying in a statement.

“The announcement obscures critical details about the supposed ‘non-profit control’ arrangement, and particularly the sharply reduced ownership stake the non-profit will receive in Altman’s for-profit enterprise,” Toberoff reportedly said.

But OpenAI hit back and alleged by continuing to pursue his lawsuit against the firm, it showed that Musk was simply trying to hinder the firm in order to allow his AI firm, xAI, to catch up.

“Elon continuing with his baseless lawsuit only proves that it was always a bad-faith attempt to slow us down,” a spokesperson for OpenAI was quoted by Reuters as saying in a statement.

It should be noted that it is not just Musk who had opposed OpenAI’s for-profit move.

Last month it emerged that ten former employees of OpenAI were asking the top law enforcement officers in California and Delaware to stop the firm from shifting control of its AI tech from a non-profit charity to a for-profit business.

And OpenAI’s decision also faced scrutiny from attorney general’s in Delaware and California.

Other big companies such as Meta and prominent figures, including Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton known as the godfather of AI, had also urged regulators to block OpenAI’s restructuring.

But now OpenAI’s board of directors said it has “an updated plan for evolving OpenAI’s structure.”

“We made the decision for the non-profit to retain control of OpenAI after hearing from civic leaders and engaging in constructive dialogue with the offices of the Attorney General of Delaware and the Attorney General of California,” said board chair Bret Taylor.

Despite this, it seems that Musk’s lawsuit will still continue.

Musk lawsuits

Elon Musk had initially sued OpenAI in March 2024 for breach of contract, alleging the firm was no longer following its original non-profit principles.

OpenAI then issued a very public and point by point rebuttal of Musk’s allegations, by directly comparing them to Musk’s own words contained within his own emails.

Musk abruptly withdrew his original lawsuit without explanation in June 2024, a day before a judge was due to rule on OpenAI’s request for it to be dismissed.

But in August 2024 Musk filed a “more forceful” lawsuit, alleging that that OpenAI and its co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman had gone against the company’s founding principles by prioritising commercial interests over the public good.

In December 2024 Musk asked a federal court for an injunction to stop OpenAI from converting into a full for-profit business.

Then in February 2025 Elon Musk and a group of investors offered about $97.4 billion to buy the non-profit behind OpenAI.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman immediately stated Musk’s offer was “ridiculous”, and “the company is not for sale”.

“Altman also noted that the ‘offer’ was “another one of his (Musk’s) tactics to mess with us,” and he had not paid any attention to it, as it “doesn’t matter.”

Elon Musk then claimed he would withdraw his $97.4 billion offer to buy the non-profit behind OpenAI, but only it drops its plan to convert into a for-profit operation.

In March a federal judge denied Elon Musk’s request for a court order blocking OpenAI from converting itself to a for-profit company, but said she could expedite a trial to consider Musk’s claims against the ChatGPT maker and its CEO.

In April OpenAI announced that it was now counter suing Elon Musk, and posted on X (formerly Twitter), that “Elon’s nonstop actions against us are just bad-faith tactics to slow down OpenAI and seize control of the leading AI innovations for his personal benefit.”