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's attorney Marc Toberoff sent a letter to the states' top law officers on Tuesday in which he argued they should provide a process for competitive bidding to determine fair market value of OpenAI's charitable assets to "protect the public's beneficial interest,

A lawyer for Elon Musk has called on the California and Delaware attorneys-general to force OpenAI to auction off a large stake in its business, intensifying a bitter fight with the company’s chief executive Sam Altman.

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.