A federal judge signaled on Friday she may dismiss a lawsuit by Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI accusing Sam Altman's rival OpenAI of stealing trade secrets to gain an unfair advantage in developing AI technology. U.S. District Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco said her "tentative view" is to grant OpenAI's motion to dismiss xAI's lawsuit, pending oral arguments on February 3. ADVERTISEMENTLawyers for xAI and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Musk's startup sued OpenAI in September, accusing it of hiring xAI employees away to obtain confidential information related to the AI chatbot Grok. Lin also said it was not plausible to infer from xAI's complaint that OpenAI used xAI's trade secrets, or the former xAI employees used them on the job after joining OpenAI.

Source: The Telegraph January 31, 2026 06:26 UTC