On August 27, 2025, San Francisco artificial intelligence startup Eliza Labs and its founder, Shaw Walters, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accusing Elon Musk's Company X (formerly Twitter) of engaging in "technical deception combined with monopolistic suppression." The lawsuit alleges that the company obtained core technical details of ElizaOS, its open-source AI framework, under the guise of a partnership, then cut off platform access and launched a highly similar competing product, directly plunging Eliza Labs into a financial crisis.
Timeline: 8 months from "invitation to cooperate" to "complete ban"
September 2024: Initial cooperation groundwork laid
ElizaOS, an open-source framework that supports "autonomous AI agents interacting across blockchains," has been operating for free for six months through the X platform's developer program, attracting 23,000 developers. Application scenarios include automated blockchain asset management and cross-platform virtual assistant collaboration. According to Eliza Labs' internal data, 65% of its customers were directed through the X platform, with monthly revenue remaining stable at $120,000.
January 2025: Closed-door talks hold hidden implications
As ElizaOS gained popularity in the developer community (its GitHub star count exceeded 8,000), X's executive team invited Walters to a closed-door meeting at its San Francisco headquarters on January 18th. According to the lawsuit, X, citing the need to "jointly develop an AI + social ecosystem," requested that Eliza Labs provide "an adaptation solution for the AI agent and X's real-time chat/voice interface" and "documentation on the core algorithms for cross-blockchain interaction," promising to include them in X's "priority developer support program."
March 2025: Sudden change in fee requirements
Just two months after the meeting, X's business team suddenly emailed Eliza Labs, demanding a $50,000 monthly "enterprise platform license fee" or else their service would be terminated. Eliza Labs countersued, arguing that the developer agreement they had previously signed clearly stipulated that "open source tools would be free to use until the end of 2025," and that X had not provided any information on new services. Eliza Labs viewed this fee demand as "the first step in forcibly depriving them of their technological achievements."
April 2025: Account blocking and “negotiation threats”
Due to his refusal to pay the licensing fee, X suspended Eliza Labs and Walters' personal account on April 7th, citing "three violations": "API circumvention" (referring to ElizaOS bypassing X's traffic restrictions through third-party plug-ins); "unverified government client collaboration" (involving Eliza's AI-powered dispatch tool for a state transportation department, which X claimed had failed its government qualification review); and "unapproved use cases" (referring to some developers using ElizaOS to build automated cryptocurrency trading bots).
An internal X email cited in the lawsuit shows that the X legal director mentioned in an internal meeting on April 10: "The penalty process can be suspended in exchange for the complete version of Eliza's technical documentation - this is more critical to the xAI team's product launch."
July 2025: Competitive product launch and complete disconnection
Despite Eliza Labs sending 17 emails between May and June requesting account restoration, X remained unresponsive. On July 15th, X's xAI division officially launched a "virtual companion" feature for the Grok chatbot: Ani, a gothic anime character (greeting "Hey, baby!"), supports real-time voice interaction, and Rudy, a hooded red panda, enables cross-platform task scheduling. These two core features closely overlap with the "virtual assistant module" and "blockchain task execution engine" in ElizaOS 2.0, even sharing some of the same UI interaction logic. Eliza Labs stated that by then, its monthly revenue had plummeted to $18,000, and three potential investors had terminated negotiations, resulting in direct economic losses exceeding $800,000.
Product technology: Open source attributes become a key point of contention for rights protection
ElizaOS uses the MIT open source protocol, and its core advantage lies in its cross-chain compatibility. It supports AI agent collaboration across six major public blockchains, including Ethereum and Solana, and can automatically execute tasks such as smart contracts and cross-chain data queries. While X's Grok "virtual companion" doesn't directly utilize ElizaOS's open source code, the lawsuit alleges that it "reuses ElizaOS's cross-chain interaction algorithm logic." For example, Ani's "three-step mapping method" for converting voice commands to blockchain tasks closely aligns with ElizaOS's patent application (US Patent No. 17/845,678, filed in 2024).
However, this claim faces legal limitations under open source agreements. Kelly Lawton-Abbott, a lawyer specializing in antitrust and intellectual property disputes in the tech sector, told Decrypt, "The MIT license allows others to modify and commercially use open source code, but copyright notices must be retained. If X merely borrowed algorithmic logic rather than copied the code, it would be difficult for Eliza to prove plagiarism. More importantly, an antitrust lawsuit requires proof that X abused its dominant market position. However, X's market share in social platform AI tools is less than 30%, making it difficult to meet the Sherman Act's standard for establishing a monopoly."
Industry and legal outlook: Settlement is more likely than victory
X Corp. has not publicly responded to the lawsuit, but Grok expressed confidence: As of August 30, X Corp. had not publicly responded to the lawsuit. However, Grok issued a statement on its community forum stating, "All functions are developed based on xAI's self-developed Grokking-1 large model. The core technology path is unrelated to ElizaOS. We will actively respond to the lawsuit and submit evidence of technology tracing."
Experts predict the case's trajectory: Abbott noted that the "success rate for such cases is less than 30%" and is more likely to end in a settlement. "Eliza Labs' core demand is likely to be 'restoration of platform privileges and compensation,' rather than a full litigation process. If X is willing to provide a certain amount of technology licensing fees and unblock the account, the two parties are likely to reach a settlement."
Industry Impact: A Warning for Open-Source AI Rights Protection: This lawsuit has sparked discussion within the open-source community. Mark Anderson, former legal counsel at the Apache Software Foundation, stated, "It serves as a reminder to open-source entrepreneurs: When collaborating with tech giants, it's important to clearly define the boundaries of technology, especially the intellectual property ownership of core algorithms, to avoid falling into the dilemma of 'collaboration-copying-blocking'."
Predicting key points of the case
According to the Northern District Court of California's schedule, X must file its defense by September 15th, with the first hearing scheduled for November. LegalEdge, a legal analysis firm, notes: "The case has an approximately 45% probability of dismissal. The antitrust claim is most likely to be dismissed initially due to 'insufficient evidence of market dominance.' While the fraud and unfair competition (UCL) claims may be retained, they remain challenging to prove. Ultimately, the case is more likely to result in X paying a settlement of $500,000 to $1 million."#马斯克的传奇人生 #Aİ
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