OpenAI hires Elon Musk foe Wachtell to fight lawsuit over company's mission

OpenAI has hired a law firm that Elon Musk previously sued for $90 million to defend it against Musk's recent lawsuit claiming the Microsoft-backed artificial intelligence company abandoned its nonprofit mission to ensure that AI benefits humanity.

Lawyers at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and another team from Morrison & Foerster will represent OpenAI, its CEO Sam Altman and others on the lawsuit, according to a filing made public on Monday in San Francisco Superior Court.

The attorneys in another filing said Musk's claims in the lawsuit "rest on convoluted — often incoherent — factual premises."

Musk sued OpenAI on Feb. 29, claiming the company, now the face of generative AI, breached its obligations to develop technology “for the benefit of humanity, not to personally benefit the individual Defendants and the largest technology company in the world.” Musk’s AI startup xAI launched in July.

Musk sued New York-based Wachtell in the same San Francisco court last year, challenging $90 million in legal fees the law firm earned as counsel to Twitter in its successful effort to force Musk to consummate his $44 billion deal to buy the social media platform.

A judge sent the fees case to private arbitration at the law firm’s request in October.

Musk’s attorney in the OpenAI case, Morgan Chu of Irell & Manella, and lawyers for OpenAI and Altman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

William Savitt, co-chair of Wachtell’s litigation department, is among the lawyers representing OpenAI. Savitt was also a lead attorney in the Delaware litigation seeking to require Musk to complete his purchase of Twitter, since renamed X.

Savitt is working with Morrison & Foerster attorneys Jordan Eth and Ragesh Tangri. The two Morrison & Foerster lawyers helped to defend Wachtell in Musk’s lawsuit over legal fees.

Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI said that the ChatGPT-maker, Altman and another co-founder, Greg Brockman, who is also a defendant, originally approached him to make an open source, non-profit company.

The lawsuit said OpenAI last year “set the founding agreement aflame” with the release of the language model GPT-4.

OpenAI’s attorneys said in a court filing that “early and swift dismissal" of the lawsuit was warranted.

"Seeing the remarkable technological advances OpenAI has achieved, Musk now wants that success for himself," the attorneys said.

The case is Elon Musk v. Samuel Altman et al, San Francisco Superior Court, No. CGC-24-612746.

For Musk: Morgan Chu, Alan Heinrich and Iian Jablon of Irell & Manella

For OpenAi: Jordan Eth and Ragesh Tangri of Morrison & Foerster; William Savitt and Sarah Eddy of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz