SAN FRANCISCO — OpenAI is raising questions over a group behind a now-amended California bill that would have threatened the company’s for-profit restructuring plans, and asking if the effort could have links to former business partner turned rival Elon Musk.
In a letter, obtained by POLITICO, OpenAI’s lawyer suggested the Coalition for AI Nonprofit Integrity echoes arguments Musk has made in court against OpenAI’s plans to convert to a for-profit structure.
“As you may know, Elon Musk has engaged in a coordinated campaign via bad-faith tactics,
including multiple lawsuits, to disrupt our operations for his own personal benefit,” wrote lawyer Ann O’Leary, former chief of staff to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The letter comes amid an escalating court battle between Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and astop California officials face pressure to intervene because the company is based in San Francisco, though incorporated in Delaware.
The OpenAI letter asks for a meeting with the coalition and its president, Jeffrey Mark Gardner, but also asks the group to disclose its funding sources. The group’s funding has yet to be disclosed in tax documents because it was so recently incorporated. State filings show Joel Aurora, of the high-powered law firm Nielsen Merksamer Parrinello Gross & Leoni, as its agent.
The coalition sponsored a bill introduced in Sacramento in February that, in its initial form, would have complicated — or potentially halted — OpenAI’s conversion to a for-profit structure. That bill was suddenly and dramatically amended in March by its author, Assemblymember Diane Papan, who said she needed more time to work on it.
Noting Musk’s efforts, including a federal lawsuit to stop the changeover, O’Leary wrote she was raising the issue, “because several of CANI’s public positions echo themes and language found in these ongoing efforts. We would welcome clarification as to whether there is any affiliation or coordination with this or any other individuals or organizations.”
Musk did not immediately respond to emailed requests for comment.
Aside from OpenAI’s suggestions, there are no other definite indications of the coalition being linked to Musk, and representatives for the coalition also did not respond to POLITICO’s requests.
OpenAI is facing pressure from multiple sides seeking to stymie its plan to make its current nonprofit parent company a shareholder in a new for-profit enterprise. Musk, an initial co-founder who ultimately left and formed his own rival firm xAI, is challenging OpenAI’s plan, arguing it deviates from the original mission to provide a public good, which OpenAI disputes.
Beyond Musk’s efforts, more than 30 former OpenAI staffers as well as Nobel Prize winners and civil society figures recently urged California Attorney General Rob Bonta and his Delaware counterpart Kathleen Jennings to stop the marquee AI company from making the change.
A powerful group of nonprofits and labor groups have also asked Bonta to intervene, saying the assets OpenAI accumulated for nonprofit purposes should be used as such.
Bonta has already launched a probe and requested documents from the company, but has declined to join Musk’s legal action. Bonta’s office has previously declined to discuss the investigation with POLITICO.
The coalition’s website calls for OpenAI’s hundreds of billions of dollars in assets to be used for nonprofit purposes.