Seems pretty straightforward... Elon invested when they claimed to be an open-source non-profit, and clearly now are closed source and very for profit. The notion that the for profit is just a temporary means to achieve scale goals is laughable.
The emails clearly show that Elon had no interest on this being a non profit. Especially because he advocated for OpenAI to be absorbed by Tesla multiple times. The only reason he is suing is because xAI is dead and he needs some AI love.
He's not asking for money in the lawsuit, so what is it going to do? I thought it was for show in the first place, the goal was to hold them to their founding principles. Which are of course, pretty subjective. Top to bottom it's God complex over there and the secret justification for closed source was pretty ironic--we only found out this key unmentioned detail once the lawsuits start flying.
He is not asking for money because that would make it crystal clear he's after the money. In actuality, he is just bitter he missed the boat. He is not after the money, but the fame.
"For an award of restitution and/or disgorgement of any and all monies received by
Defendants while they engaged in the unfair and improper practices described
herein"
He claims he'll give all the money to charity, but he's certainly asking for money.
1) They defied their original charter. 2) separately: Creating a for-profit entity is not what happened here. They transformed into a for-profit entity and discarded the non-profit mission. There is no vestige left of the original non-profit. Same funds, same code, same IP.
1) OpenAI did not change their mission. They are still pursuing AI. They are simply making more money doing it now than they did when they started.
2) Lots of non-profits make a profit. A non-profit is not defined by losing money, it is defined by the nature of what it does with its money, and what parts of its revenue are subject to taxation and what parts are tax-free. For example: the Microsoft contract would have been subject to income tax even if was directly with the OpenAI non-profit entity; moving that to the for-profit subsidiary just simplifies the accounting.
3) I do not think that OpenAI's mission should have ever qualified it for IRC 501(c)(3) status, but the IRS didn't agree and at this point it would be very difficult to challenge the (parent entity)'s non-profit status.
