The U.S. Federal Trade Commission weighed in on Friday on Elon Musk's lawsuit seeking to block OpenAI's conversion to a public company, pointing out legal doctrines that could support his claim that OpenAI and Microsoft engaged in anticompetitive practices.

According to a report in the Financial Times, lawyers for Musk have contacted attorneys-general in Delaware and California to demand that a large stake in OpenAI be sold off in an open auction process.

OpenAI launched a for-profit subsidiary a year later in order to raise outside capital, including more than $13 billion so far from its biggest backer, Microsoft. However, the non-profit entity, along with employees and investors, currently owns that for-profit subsidiary.

Musk dropped the lawsuit but filed another one against Altman and OpenAI, this time elevating his accusations to claim OpenAI worked with Microsoft, an investor, to create a monopoly. The billionaire also alleged the company violated its founding claim as a nonprofit by pursuing profit. OpenAI has denied the allegations.

Indeed, Musk suggested that synthetic data — data generated by AI models themselves — is the path forward. “The only way to supplement [real-world data] is with synthetic data, where the AI creates [training data],” he said. “With synthetic data … [AI] will sort of grade itself and go through this process of self-learning.”

New filings in Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI show two top tech investors back his allegation that the ChatGPT developer sought to unfairly quash competition.

A lawyer for billionaire Elon Musk has asked attorney generals in the states of California and Delaware to push OpenAI to auction a major stake in its business to decide fair value of its charitable asset during its corporate restructuring,

Elon Musk and his attorneys have asked judges in the states of California and Delaware to cause an auction that would force OpenAI to sell off a portion of its business, the Financial Times reported.