xAI sues former employee over alleged theft of Grok trade secrets

Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI has filed a lawsuit alleging that former employee Xuechen Li stole confidential materials and trade secrets related to Grok before joining OpenAI. The complaint claims Li copied documents from an xAI laptop to at least one personal device and took “cutting-edge AI technologies with features superior to those offered by ChatGPT and other competing products.”

According to the suit, the stolen information could give rivals a major advantage and save competitors “billions in R&D dollars and years of engineering effort.” xAI also alleges Li tried to conceal his actions by renaming and compressing files and deleting browser history.

The complaint says Li requested xAI buy back company shares worth roughly $7 million — part of his compensation — before leaving to join OpenAI. xAI is seeking a temporary restraining order to force Li to surrender access to any personal devices or cloud storage, return confidential materials, and temporarily bar him from working at OpenAI or other competitors until the company recovers its trade secrets.

This lawsuit arrives amid an intense talent war in AI, with top researchers being offered huge compensation packages to switch companies. Separately, Musk and xAI recently sued OpenAI and Apple, accusing them of collusion to maintain an AI monopoly.

Source: Engadget — Read the full article

Note: This post summarizes the Engadget article and public reports. If additional credible sources become available, they will be added.