Eliza Labs founder sues Elon Musk’s X over alleged anticompetitive actions and account suspension

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Quick Take

  • Eliza Labs filed a lawsuit against X, alleging that X launched copycat AI products after obtaining key technical information from Eliza.
  • Eliza also claimed that X banned its account after it declined to pay an “exorbitantly expensive” enterprise license fee.

Eliza Labs, an AI software company, has sued X Corp, alleging that the social media platform "wielded its incredible monopoly power" to suspend Eliza's account after extracting valuable knowledge from the AI firm.

In a Wednesday filing with the federal court in San Francisco, Eliza Labs and its founder, Shaw Walters, claimed that X launched copycat AI products after obtaining key technical information from Eliza and then removing the company from the X platform.

"This case involves X Corp wielding its incredible monopoly power with perceived immunity from suit to deplatform users with the intent to restrain competition for launching AI Agents on the X Corp platform," the filing said.

The plaintiffs argued that X suspended the accounts of both Eliza Labs and Walters without warning or legitimate justification. 

"In the weeks leading to the deplatforming, X began to push plaintiffs to adopt an exorbitantly expensive 'Enterprise License' or 'Enterprise API' (for $50,000/month, or $600,000.00/year)," Eliza said in the filing, adding that it declined to pay for such services.

Eliza suggested that X's move "constituted a coordinated, fraudulent, and anticompetitive effort" to obtain money and technical intelligence from the plaintiffs regarding their open-source software development processes.

The Block has reached out to X and Eliza Labs for comment.

Eliza Labs is the creator of the $2.5 billion-valued elizaOS open-source protocol for autonomous AI agents. In April, it launched a no-code AI agent launchpad that enables users to develop advanced AI agents without requiring coding knowledge.


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AUTHOR

Timmy Shen is an Asia editor for The Block. Previously, he wrote about crypto and Web3 for Forkast.News from Taiwan after spending more than three years in Beijing covering finance, entertainment business and current affairs at Caixin Global and Chinese tech at TechNode. His China-related reporting has also appeared in The Guardian. When he's not chasing headlines, you'll find him savoring hot pot and shabu shabu in a Taipei local haunt. Timmy holds an MS degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Send tips to [email protected] or get in touch on X/Telegram @timmyhmshen.

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To contact the editor of this story: Vishal Chawla at [email protected]

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