After years of rejecting the idea of a sale of TikTok’s US assets to an American buyer in order to avert a ban, China and ByteDance may have found an owner they could live with: Elon Musk.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Musk, who was initially a backer of OpenAI, was reacting to the whistleblower’s mother's assertion in an interview that her son wasn't okay with the ChatGPT maker turning into a