Elon Musk is seeking up to $134 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming the companies improperly benefited from his early involvement and that he is entitled to recover what he describes as their “wrongful gains,” according to a court filing submitted on Friday.
In the filing, Musk said OpenAI gained between $65.5 billion and $109.4 billion from his contributions when he helped establish the organization as a startup in 2015.
Microsoft, he argued, realized gains of between $13.3 billion and $25.1 billion from the same early support, as Musk prepares for a trial against the two companies.
“Without Elon Musk, there’d be no OpenAI. He provided the bulk of the seed funding, lent his reputation, and taught them all he knows about scaling a business. A pre-eminent expert quantified the value of that,” Musk’s lead trial lawyer Steven Molo said in a statement to Reuters.
OpenAI rejected the claim in a statement, calling it an “unserious demand” and saying it forms part of what the company described as Musk’s “harassment campaign” against it.
Earlier this week, OpenAI described the lawsuit as “baseless” and again characterized it as part of a broader “harassment” effort by Musk. A lawyer for Microsoft has also said there is no evidence the company “aided and abetted” OpenAI.
In a separate filing on Friday, OpenAI and Microsoft challenged Musk’s claims for damages.
Musk, who left OpenAI in 2018 and now runs artificial intelligence firm xAI, which operates the rival chatbot Grok, alleges that OpenAI violated its founding mission by restructuring into a for-profit entity.
A judge in Oakland, California, ruled earlier this month that the dispute will proceed to a jury trial, which is expected to begin in April.
Musk’s filing states that he contributed about $38 million, accounting for roughly 60% of OpenAI’s early seed funding, and helped recruit staff, connect founders with key contacts and provide credibility during the company’s early development.
“Just as an early investor in a startup company may realize gains many orders of magnitude greater than the investor’s initial investment, the wrongful gains that OpenAI and Microsoft have earned – and which Mr. Musk is now entitled to disgorge – are much larger than Mr. Musk’s initial contributions,” Musk argues.
The court document says Musk’s contributions to OpenAI and Microsoft were calculated by his expert witness, financial economist C. Paul Wazzan.
The filing also notes that Musk may seek punitive damages and other penalties, including a possible injunction, if the jury finds either company liable, without detailing what form such an injunction might take.
In their own filing, OpenAI and Microsoft asked the judge to limit what Musk’s expert witness may present to jurors, arguing the analysis should be excluded as “made up,” “unverifiable” and “unprecedented,” and as seeking an “implausible” transfer of billions of dollars from a nonprofit organization to a former donor who is now a competitor.
The companies also disputed Musk’s damages estimates more broadly, saying the expert’s approach is unreliable and could mislead the jury.
