xAI sues ex-engineer over Grok files, seeks TRO to block OpenAI

Elon Musk's AI startup xAI filed a federal lawsuit in California this week accusing former engineer Xuechen Li of stealing confidential files related to its Grok chatbot and taking them to rival OpenAI before beginning work there. The complaint says the alleged theft occurred in July and seeks a temporary restraining order to block Li from working at OpenAI or other competitors until xAI's trade secrets are recovered, along with unspecified monetary damages.

According to the lawsuit, Li copied documents from an xAI-issued laptop onto at least one personal device on the same day roughly 7 million in company stock that he sold became available to him. The complaint alleges Li took steps to conceal the transfer, including deleting browser history and system logs, renaming and compressing files, and otherwise hiding files on his personal systems. xAI says Li admitted in a meeting on August 14, both verbally and in a handwritten note, to taking company files, and that additional material was later found on his devices.

The complaint describes the stolen material as "cutting-edge AI technologies with features superior to those offered by ChatGPT and other competing products" and warns...