Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur known for his ventures from Tesla to SpaceX, is once again at the center of high-stakes legal drama. This time, the spotlight falls on two fiercely contested court battles: one with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over his acquisition of Twitter (now X), and another with OpenAI, the artificial intelligence powerhouse he helped launch nearly a decade ago. Both disputes, unfolding in federal courts as of October 2025, offer a revealing look into the power struggles, personal rivalries, and regulatory scrutiny shaping the modern tech landscape.
The courtroom clash with the SEC reached a new milestone on October 2, 2025, when U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan rejected Musk’s attempt to move the agency’s lawsuit from Washington, D.C. to Texas or New York. According to Nexstar Media, Musk argued that litigating in Washington was inconvenient, but the judge was unmoved. “The Court takes Mr. Musk’s convenience seriously, but it also notes that Mr. Musk has considerable means and spends at least forty percent of his time outside his chosen forum,” Sooknanan wrote in her order. She pointed out that, despite Musk’s claims of rarely visiting Washington, his own legal filings indicated he had spent substantial time in the district during 2025.
The SEC’s lawsuit, filed in January 2025, accuses Musk of violating securities laws by failing to disclose his growing stake in Twitter in early 2022 before launching his $44 billion takeover. Under federal law, investors must notify regulators once their ownership in a public company exceeds five percent. Musk, however, delayed filing the required forms until he owned more than nine percent, a move the SEC claims allowed him to buy shares at artificially low prices—costing other shareholders more than $150 million. The agency alleges this delay gave Musk an unfair edge and undercut the integrity of the market.
Musk’s legal team has not taken these allegations lying down. In August 2025, his attorneys sought to have the SEC’s suit dismissed outright, calling it a “waste of this court’s time and taxpayer resources,” according to reports from Bloomberg. They also renewed their request to move the proceedings to Texas, where many of Musk’s businesses are based. Musk’s lawyers argued that forcing him to litigate in Washington would only “perpetuate and compound the harm from the SEC’s years-long campaign against him.”
The judge, however, was unswayed by these arguments, emphasizing that Musk’s global business interests and frequent travel made convenience a less compelling factor. The SEC, for its part, argued that the evidence of Musk’s violation is clear and asked the court to rule in its favor without a trial.
The legal saga with the SEC is only one front in Musk’s ever-expanding legal battles. In San Francisco federal court, another drama is playing out—this one involving Musk’s AI company, xAI, and his former co-founded venture, OpenAI. As reported by IBTimes UK and other outlets, xAI has accused OpenAI of orchestrating a campaign to poach key staff and steal proprietary technology, particularly secrets related to xAI’s AI chatbot Grok.
According to xAI’s complaint, OpenAI targeted employees with deep knowledge of xAI’s source code, design models, and data center operations. xAI alleges that former employees, including Xuechen Li and Jimmy Fraiture, were induced to breach confidentiality agreements and hand over trade secrets before joining OpenAI. The company’s legal filing is blunt, declaring, “By hook or by crook, OpenAI clearly will do anything when threatened by a better innovator, including plundering and misappropriating the technical advancements, source code, and business plans of xAI.”
xAI’s accusations are not limited to staff poaching. In a separate action, xAI targeted Xuechen Li individually, claiming he copied confidential files from his xAI-issued laptop to an external drive, deleted logs, and altered file names to cover his tracks before moving to OpenAI. The company maintains these files contained “cutting-edge AI technologies with features superior to those offered by ChatGPT and other competing products.” xAI is now seeking monetary damages and a restraining order to prevent Li from working at OpenAI.
OpenAI, for its part, has forcefully denied all wrongdoing. On October 2, 2025, it filed a motion to dismiss xAI’s lawsuit, labeling the allegations “baseless” and describing Musk’s legal maneuvers as an “ongoing harassment” campaign. As stated in their court filing, “Unable to match OpenAI’s innovation, xAI has filed this groundless trade secret lawsuit. To be clear: OpenAI does not need or want anyone’s — much less xAI’s — trade secrets to achieve OpenAI’s mission.” OpenAI also took to X (formerly Twitter) to publicly defend itself, tweeting, “OpenAI doesn’t need or want anyone’s trade secrets. We will protect our employees and won’t be intimidated by his attempts to bully them.”
The company contends that xAI’s legal offensive is designed to intimidate former employees and chill further departures, rather than to protect genuine trade secrets. “This case is clearly designed to generate publicity to bully and threaten those employees… and to try to chill further flight from xAI,” OpenAI’s lawyers argued. They further claim that xAI is “hemorrhaging talent to other competitors, including OpenAI,” and that the lawsuit is a smokescreen for internal difficulties.
The legal feud is the latest escalation in a long and complicated relationship between Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The two co-founded OpenAI nearly a decade ago, but their partnership has soured as both men have pursued competing visions for artificial intelligence. Earlier in 2025, Musk’s xAI-led group made a jaw-dropping $97.4 billion bid to acquire OpenAI, only for the offer to be rejected outright by OpenAI’s board, which insisted the company was not for sale. Meanwhile, xAI has also filed a separate lawsuit against Apple, accusing it of colluding with OpenAI to suppress competition in the App Store—an allegation both Apple and OpenAI have moved to dismiss.
What’s at stake in these battles is more than just legal bragging rights. The disputes highlight the breakneck competition in the AI industry, with xAI’s Grok and OpenAI’s ChatGPT locked in a race for technological supremacy. The outcome could shape not only the future of artificial intelligence but also the rules of engagement for tech giants vying for dominance in a rapidly evolving field.
While the courts may ultimately decide the fate of these high-profile lawsuits, the ripple effects are already being felt across Silicon Valley and beyond. For Musk, the stakes are personal as well as professional—a test of his ability to outmaneuver regulators, rivals, and former allies in equal measure.
As both cases proceed, observers will be watching closely to see whether Musk’s gambits in the courtroom translate into victories—or whether his adversaries, from federal regulators to former collaborators, will ultimately have the last word.
