OpenAI is not just defending against Musk lawsuit -- it is going on offense, asking state investigators to examine his conduct. The move fits a pattern in Big Tech. What sets OpenAI apart: it was on the receiving end of the same playbook less than two years ago.
image from grok
OpenAI has escalated its legal battle with Elon Musk by petitioning California and Delaware attorneys general to investigate him for anti-competitive behavior, claiming Musk coordinated with Mark Zuckerberg to undermine its nonprofit mission. The timing is strategic: Musk's $79-134.5 billion lawsuit against OpenAI goes to jury selection on April 27, while SpaceX/xAI's confidential IPO filing in April 2026 could be complicated by new regulatory scrutiny over Grok's alleged deepfake generation. The move signals a shift from courtroom combat to regulatory pressure as a legal tactic.
OpenAI has asked the attorneys general of California and Delaware to investigate Elon Musk for anti-competitive behavior, escalating a legal battle that reaches well beyond the courtroom and into the machinery of federal regulation.
Jason Kwon, OpenAI's chief strategy officer, sent a letter to California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Delaware Attorney General Kathleen Jennings urging them to open a formal investigation, CNBC reported. The letter alleges Musk has coordinated with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to undermine OpenAI's efforts to develop artificial general intelligence. "Two of the top four wealthiest people, most powerful people in the world" are trying to stop a nonprofit from operating, OpenAI Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane told CNBC. The framing matters: this is not commercial competition but a power grab by the already-powerful against a mission-driven institution.
The trial geometry is complicated. Jury selection begins April 27 in the Northern District of California in Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman. Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and left in 2018 after trying to convince executives to merge it with Tesla, is seeking between $79 billion and $134.5 billion in damages, arguing that OpenAI's transition to a for-profit corporation betrayed its original mission, Reuters reported. A separate trade-secrets lawsuit xAI filed against OpenAI was dismissed in February by U.S. District Judge Rita Lin, who found the complaint focused on the conduct of former xAI employees rather than any misconduct by OpenAI itself, Reuters reported. OpenAI called it "yet another front in Mr. Musk's ongoing campaign of harassment."
The AG letter adds a new front. OpenAI referenced a New Yorker investigation reporting that Musk and his intermediaries conducted opposition research on Altman — tracking his flights, circulating sexual misconduct allegations, distributing research to company rivals. OpenAI also alleged in the letter that xAI's Grok chatbot is under global investigation for generating non-consensual sexual deepfakes of women and children, allegedly to inflate usage metrics ahead of an IPO. SpaceX, which merged with xAI in February, confidentially filed for an IPO on April 1, with the offering expected as early as June 2026, The Verge reported. The implication is direct: if Musk's legal campaign succeeds, it benefits a company facing serious regulatory scrutiny that a successful IPO could compound.
The timing is deliberate. OpenAI completed its transition to a for-profit public benefit corporation in October 2025, with Microsoft retaining a 27% stake and access to its technology through 2032, Fortune reported. California and Delaware extracted 20 concessions from OpenAI during that restructuring — the kind of regulatory oversight that suggests the states see themselves as stakeholders in how the company evolves. Asking those same AGs to investigate Musk is OpenAI calling in a favor from regulators it spent months cultivating.
There is a through-line here that the wire coverage misses. This is not the first time a major tech company has turned a regulatory relationship around on a rival. Google filed its first-ever EU antitrust complaint against Microsoft in September 2024, The Washington Post reported, accusing Microsoft of using its dominance in business software to lock clients into Azure. The FTC opened an investigation into OpenAI in January 2024, examining the Microsoft partnership that would later become the subject of Musk's lawsuit, Axios reported. OpenAI asking California and Delaware to investigate Musk now fits a pattern: companies that were regulatory targets learning to become regulatory weapons.
The Zuckerberg dimension adds a subplot that court documents have now filled in. According to unsealed filings, Zuckerberg texted Musk in February 2025 offering help with DOGE, the special advisory commission created to shrink the federal government. "I have got our teams on alert to take down content doxxing or threatening the people on your team," Zuckerberg wrote. Musk responded with a heart emoji and asked if Zuckerberg was "open to the idea of bidding on the OpenAI IP with me and some others." Zuckerberg offered to discuss it live, Fortune reported. Neither Meta nor Zuckerberg signed a letter of intent or made a formal bid. But the communication — enemies two years earlier, texting about a joint takeover of the company they'd both tried to acquire — illustrates how quickly the competitive landscape in AI reshapes around personal and political alignment rather than product strategy.
What OpenAI is doing is litigation-as-lobbying: using the threat of a regulatory investigation to change the terrain of a legal fight it cannot otherwise control. Whether California or Delaware opens an investigation is unknown. Whether such an investigation would find anything actionable is unknown. What is known is that OpenAI spent months building goodwill with both offices during its restructuring, and it is now deploying that goodwill as a legal weapon. That is not a legal strategy. It is a political one.
The April 27 trial will be the main event. Everything else — the AG letter, the New Yorker reporting, the IPO timing — is prologue.
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Research completed — 6 sources registered. OpenAI strategy chief Jason Kwon sent letter to CA AG Rob Bonta and DE AG Kathleen Jennings urging investigation of Musk anti-competitive behavior ahe
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