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Elon Musk is asking a federal court to stop OpenAI from converting into a fully for-profit business.

Attorneys representing Musk, his AI startup xAI, and former OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis filed for a preliminary injunction against OpenAI on Friday. The injunction would also stop OpenAI from allegedly requiring its investors to refrain from funding competitors, including xAI and others.

The latest court filings represent an escalation in the legal feud between Musk, OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, as well as other long-involved parties and backers including tech investor Reid Hoffman and Microsoft.

Musk had originally sued OpenAI in March 2024 in a San Francisco state court, before withdrawing that complaint and refiling several months later in federal court. Attorneys for Musk in the federal suit, led by Marc Toberoff in Los Angeles, argued in their complaint that OpenAI has violated federal racketeering, or RICO, laws.

In mid-November, they expanded their complaint to include allegations that Microsoft and OpenAI had violated antitrust laws when the Chat GPT-maker allegedly asked investors to agree to not invest in rival companies, including Musk’s newest startup, xAI.

Microsoft declined to comment.

 In their motion for preliminary injunction, attorneys for Musk argue that OpenAI should be prohibited from “benefitting from wrongfully obtained competitively sensitive information or coordination via the Microsoft-OpenAI board interlocks.”

“Elon’s fourth attempt, which again recycles the same baseless complaints, continues to be utterly without merit,” an OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement.

OpenAI has emerged as one of the biggest startups in recent years, with ChatGPT becoming a major hit that has helped usher massive corporate enthusiasm over AI and related large language models.

Since Musk announced xAI’s debut in July 2023, his newer AI business has released its Grok chatbot and is raising up to $6 billion at a $50 billion valuation, in part to buy 100,000 Nvidia chips, CNBC reported earlier this month.

“Microsoft and OpenAI now seek to cement this dominance by cutting off competitors’ access to investment capital (a group boycott), while continuing to benefit from years’ worth of shared competitively sensitive information during generative AI’s formative years,” the lawyers wrote in the filing.

The attorneys wrote that the terms OpenAI asked investors to agree to amounted to a “group boycott” that “blocks xAI’s access to essential investment capital.”

The lawyers later added that OpenAI “cannot lumber about the marketplace as a Frankenstein, stitched together from whichever corporate forms serve the pecuniary interests of Microsoft.”

In July, Microsoft gave up its observer seat on OpenAI’s board, although CNBC reported that the Federal Trade Commission would continue to monitor the influence of two companies over the AI industry.

FTC Chair Linda Khan announced at the beginning of the year that the federal agency would initiate a “market inquiry into the investments and partnerships being formed between AI developers and major cloud service providers.” Some of the companies that the FTC mentioned as part of the study included OpenAI, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Anthropic.

In the filing, attorneys for Musk also argue that OpenAI should be prohibited from “benefitting from wrongfully obtained competitively sensitive information or coordination via the Microsoft-OpenAI board interlocks.”

OpenAI originally debuted in 2015 as a non-profit and then in 2019, converted into a so-called capped-profit model, in which the OpenAI non-profit was the governing entity for its for-profit subsidiary. It’s in the process of being converted into a fully for-profit public benefit corporation that could make it more attractive to investors. The restructuring plan would also allow OpenAI to retain its non-profit status as a separate entity, CNBC previously reported.

Microsoft has invested nearly $14 billion in OpenAI but revealed in October as part of its fiscal first-quarter earnings report that it would record a $1.5 billion loss in the current period largely due to an expected loss from OpenAI.

In October, OpenAI closed a major funding round that valued the startup at $157 billion. Thrive Capital led the financing while investors, including Microsoft and Nvidia, also participated.

OpenAI has faced increasing competition from startups such as xAI, Anthropic and tech giants such as Google. The generative AI market is predicted to top $1 trillion in revenue within a decade, and business spending on generative AI surged 500% this year, according to recent data from Menlo Ventures.

CNBC reached out to attorneys for Musk on Saturday. They did not respond to requests for comment.

— CNBC’s Hayden Field contributed reporting

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Teladoc shares tumble on wider-than-expected loss, disappointing revenue guidance

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Teladoc shares tumble on wider-than-expected loss, disappointing revenue guidance

Teladoc Health Inc. signage on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Dec. 31, 2024.

Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Teladoc Health shares fell in extended trading on Wednesday after the company reported a wider loss than analysts expected and issued disappointing quarterly guidance.

Here’s how the company did, compared to analysts’ consensus estimates from LSEG:

  • Loss per share: 28 cents vs. 24 cents expected
  • Revenue: $640.5 million vs. $639.6 million expected

Revenue at the telehealth company decreased 3% in the fourth quarter from $660.5 million during the same period last year, according to a release. Teladoc’s net loss widened to $48.4 million, or 28 cents per share, from a loss of $28.9 million, or 17 cents per share, a year ago.

Teladoc is in the middle of a deep slump, with its stock price dropping in each of the past four years due to hefty competition in remote health, challenges at mental health division BetterHelp and high operating costs.

When Teladoc acquired digital health company Livongo in 2020, the companies had a combined enterprise value of $37 billion. Teladoc’s market cap was around $1.9 billion as of market close on Wednesday.

“As we look forward in 2025, execution will continue to be a top priority as we advance efforts to unlock growth opportunities and position the company for long term success,” Teladoc CEO Chuck Divita said in the statement. “We will also remain focused on our cost structure, building on the significant improvements achieved in 2024 over the prior year.”  

Teladoc reported adjusted earnings of $74.8 million in its fourth quarter, a 35% decrease from a year ago. Adjusted earnings for the company’s Integrated Care segment declined 5% to $53.2 million, and BetterHelp saw adjusted earnings drop 63% to $21.7 million.

For the first quarter, Teladoc said it expects revenue of between $608 million and $629 million, while analysts were expecting $632.9 million. The company said adjusted earnings will be between $47 million and $59 million for the period.

Earlier this month, Teladoc announced it will acquire preventative care company Catapult Health in an all-cash deal for $65 million. Teladoc said its outlook includes the anticipated contribution from the deal but not the effect of potential impairments or purchase accounting. Teladoc said the acquisition should close at the end of the month.

Teladoc will host its quarterly call with investors at 4:30 p.m. ET.

— CNBC’s Bertha Coombs contributed to this report.

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Salesforce misses on revenue, issues disappointing guidance

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Salesforce misses on revenue, issues disappointing guidance

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff appears at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 23, 2025.

Halil Sagirkaya | Anadolu | Getty Images

Salesforce reported weaker-than-expected quarterly revenue on Wednesday and issued a forecast that fell short of analysts’ estimates. The stock price slipped 4% in extended trading.

Here’s how the company did compared with LSEG consensus:

  • Earnings per share: $2.78 adjusted vs. $2.61 expected
  • Revenue: $9.99 billion vs. $10.04 billion expected

Revenue increased 7.6% from a year ago in the quarter that ended Jan. 31, according to a statement. Net income rose to $1.71 billion, or $1.75 per share, from $1.45 billion, or $1.47 per share, a year earlier.

The top category of subscription and support revenue was service, at $2.33 billion. The figure was up about 8% and below the $2.37 billion consensus among analysts surveyed by Visible Alpha. In the sales category, Salesforce generated $2.13 billion in revenue, up 8% and also trailing Visible Alpha’s consensus of $2.17 billion.

During the quarter, the company introduced its second-generation Agentforce artificial intelligence agent technology, which answers employee questions in the Slack team communications app.

Salesforce said it has completed more than 3,000 paid deals involving Agentforce since October. Agentforce has gotten involved in 380,000 conversations through Salesforce’s help website, with humans getting involved in 2% of cases, according to the statement.

“A lot of other vendors are talking about their agent capabilities, but few are able to show that they’ve got this really running at scale,” co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff said on a conference call with analysts.

Agentforce will make a modest contribution to revenue in fiscal 2026, with a larger effect in the following year, said Amy Weaver, Salesforce’s outgoing finance chief.

Benioff referred to a forthcoming product in the area of information technology service management, where ServiceNow operates.

The U.S. Department of Government Efficiency is using Slack, Benioff said.

“We’ll work closely with the government,” he said. “We’ll do anything we can to help them succeed.”

The company called for $2.53 to $2.55 in adjusted earnings per share for the fiscal first quarter, with $9.71 billion to $9.76 billion in revenue. Analysts polled by LSEG had anticipated adjusted earnings of $2.61 per share, with $9.9 billion in revenue.

For fiscal 2026, Salesforce is targeting $11.09 to $11.17 in adjusted earnings per share on $40.5 billion to $40.9 billion in revenue, implying 7.4% growth. The LSEG consensus was for adjusted earnings per share of $11.18 on $41.35 billion in revenue.

As of Wednesday’s close, Salesforce shares are down about 8% so far in 2025, while the S&P 500 index has gained about 1%.

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Instacart suffers steepest drop on record after disappointing revenue, lackluster forecast

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Instacart suffers steepest drop on record after disappointing revenue, lackluster forecast

The Instacart logo is seen on a smartphone and on a PC screen.

Pavlo Gonchar | SOPA Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Instacart‘s stock had its worst day on record, slumping 12% after the grocery delivery company posted a fourth-quarter revenue miss and offered light guidance for the current period.

Prior to Wednesday’s move, the stock’s biggest one-day slump came in November, when it dropped 11%.

Instacart reported fourth-quarter revenue of $883 million, falling short of the $891 million average analyst estimate, according to LSEG. The company said it anticipates adjusted earnings of between $220 million and $230 million for the first quarter, below a consensus forecast of $237.1 million.

Gross transaction value, which measures the value of products sold, will come in between $9 billion and $9.15 billion in the quarter, compared to a FactSet estimate of $9 billion. Instacart said it expects average order growth to decline due to restaurant orders and its $0 delivery fee on minimum $10 baskets.

When Instacart held its Nasdaq debut in September 2023, it became the first notable venture-backed company to go public in the U.S. in about two years, as the market adjusted to soaring inflation and rising interest rates.

The company, whose official corporate name is Maplebear, closed its first day on the market with a roughly $11 billion market cap, down from its $39 billion private market valuation in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The stock peaked at $53.15 on Feb. 19 after rallying 76% last year. It closed on Wednesday at $42.80.

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