ReportWire

Tag: Xuechen Li

  • xAI accuses OpenAI of stealing its trade secrets in new lawsuit

    [ad_1]

    Elon Musk’s xAI is suing OpenAI, alleging that the ChatGPT maker has stolen its trade secrets. The lawsuit comes after the company recently sued a former employee, Xuechen Li, for allegedly stealing confidential information from the company before taking a job at OpenAI.

    In its latest lawsuit, which was reported by Sherwood, xAI says that Li’s alleged actions are part of “a broader and deeply troubling pattern of trade secret misappropriation, unfair competition, and intentional interference with economic relationships by OpenAI.” According to xAI’s lawyers, OpenAI also hired two other xAI employees who stole proprietary information from Musk’s company.

    “Another early xAI engineer—Jimmy Fraiture—was also harvesting xAI’s source code and airdropping it to his personal devices to take to OpenAI, where he now works,” the lawsuit states. “Meanwhile, a senior finance executive brought another piece of the puzzle to OpenAI—xAI’s ‘secret sauce’ of rapid data center deployment—with no intention to abide by his legal obligations to xAI.”

    “This new lawsuit is the latest chapter in Mr Musk’s ongoing harassment. We have no tolerance for any breaches of confidentiality, nor any interest in trade secrets from other labs,” OpenAI said in a statement the company shared with Engadget.

    Musk, of course, has a complicated history with the ChatGPT maker, and this isn’t the first time his rival AI company has sued OpenAI. Last month, xAI filed lawsuits against OpenAI and Apple over Grok’s placement on App Store charts. Musk alleged that ChatGPT rank in the top spot represented an “unequivocal antitrust violation.” Musk has also filed numerous lawsuits against OpenAI over its relationship with Microsoft and its move to become a for-profit company.

    Update 2:49 PM ET: Added comment from OpenAI.

    [ad_2]

    Karissa Bell

    Source link

  • Elon Musk’s xAI Faces High Exec Turnover as CFO and Key Leaders Step Down

    [ad_1]

    Elon Musk’s A.I. firm is best known for its Grok chatbot. Photo by Jared Siskin/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images

    Mike Liberatore, chief financial officer of Elon Musk’s xAI, has left the company after just three months, the Wall Street Journal first reported. His exit adds to a wave of high-profile turnover at the startup. Launched by Musk in 2023, xAI is best known for its Grok chatbot. The company’s technology has quickly caught up to competitors, but Grok has also made headlines for controversial outputs and now for a string of executive departures.

    Liberatore joined xAI in April after eight years at Airbnb, where he was vice president of finance and corporate development. He also previously worked at PayPal and eBay. At xAI, he was reportedly involved in fundraising and oversaw data center expansion efforts in Memphis, Tenn. Liberatore left in July, according to the Journal.

    Around the same time, Raghu Rao, xAI’s former commercial lead, also departed. Rao had joined in April following roles at Zoom, Ernst & Young and Deloitte.

    Another loss came this summer when Robert Keele, a member of xAI’s legal team, stepped away from his role as general counsel. “Working with Elon on this tech, at this time, was the adventure of a lifetime,” Keele wrote in an Aug. 5 X post. He said he was leaving to spend more time with his family. His farewell included a Grok-generated video of a man in a suit shoveling coal, which Keele said was the chatbot’s response to the prompt: “What’s it like to lead legal at xAI?”

    Musk built xAI in just a few years with a founding team largely drawn from OpenAI and Google. Of the dozen co-founders, at least three have since left. Kyle Kosic is now at OpenAI, while Christian Szegedy became chief scientist at Morph Labs. Both departed last year.

    The most recent co-founder to exit was Igor Babushkin, who led engineering teams at the firm before leaving in August to launch his own venture capital firm focused on A.I. startups and agentic systems. “We wouldn’t be here without you,” said Musk in an Aug. 13 post responding to Babushkin’s announcement.

    Not every departure has been as cordial. Last month, xAI filed a lawsuit against Xuechen Li, a former member of xAI’s technical team, accusing him of stealing trade secrets to take to a new role at OpenAI. Li, who joined xAI in February 2024 and helped develop Grok, allegedly uploaded confidential data before accepting an offer from OpenAI in August. On Sept. 3, xAI won a court order temporarily blocking Li from starting the new job.

    Elon Musk’s xAI Faces High Exec Turnover as CFO and Key Leaders Step Down

    [ad_2]

    Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

    Source link