Elon Musk, chief govt officer of Tesla Inc., through the US-Saudi Funding Discussion board on the Kennedy Heart in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025.
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Elon Musk is searching for as much as $134 billion from OpenAI and Microsoft, saying he deserves the “wrongful positive factors” that they obtained from his early assist, in response to a court docket submitting on Friday.
OpenAI gained between $65.5 billion and $109.4 billion from the billionaire entrepreneur’s contributions when he was co-founding what was then a startup from 2015, whereas Microsoft gained between $13.3 billion and $25.1 billion, Musk mentioned within the federal court docket submitting forward of his trial towards the 2 corporations.
“With out Elon Musk, there’d be no OpenAI. He offered the majority of the seed funding, lent his popularity, and taught all of them he is aware of about scaling a enterprise. A pre-eminent skilled quantified the worth of that,” Musk’s lead trial lawyer Steven Molo mentioned in a press release to Reuters.
OpenAI, in a press release, known as it an “unserious demand” by Musk and mentioned it was a part of his “harassment marketing campaign” towards OpenAI.
Microsoft didn’t reply to a request for remark outdoors enterprise hours on the quantity of compensation Musk is searching for.
Microsoft and OpenAI additionally file fits
In the course of the week, OpenAI known as the lawsuit “baseless” and a part of a “harassment” marketing campaign by Musk. A Microsoft lawyer has mentioned there isn’t a proof that the corporate “aided and abetted” OpenAI.
The 2 corporations challenged Musk’s damages claims in a separate submitting on Friday.
Musk, who left OpenAI in 2018 and runs xAI, a competitor to ChatGPT, alleges that ChatGPT operator OpenAI violated its founding mission by a high-profile restructuring right into a for-profit entity.
A decide in Oakland, California, dominated this month {that a} jury will hear the trial, anticipated to start out in April.
Musk’s submitting says he contributed about $38 million, 60% of OpenAI’s early seed funding, helped recruit workers, join the founders with contacts and lend credibility to the venture when it was created.
“Simply as an early investor in a startup firm could notice positive factors many orders of magnitude higher than the investor’s preliminary funding, the wrongful positive factors that OpenAI and Microsoft have earned – and which Mr. Musk is now entitled to disgorge – are a lot bigger than Mr. Musk’s preliminary contributions,” Musk argues.
The submitting says Musk’s contributions to OpenAI and Microsoft have been calculated by his skilled witness, monetary economist C. Paul Wazzan.
Musk could search punitive damages and different penalties, together with a doable injunction, if the jury finds both firm liable, the submitting says, with out specifying what kind any injunction may take.
In their very own submitting, OpenAI and Microsoft requested the decide to restrict what Musk’s skilled could current to jurors, arguing his evaluation needs to be excluded as “made up,” “unverifiable” and “unprecedented” and as searching for an “implausible” switch of billions from a nonprofit to a former donor-turned-competitor.
The businesses additionally disputed Musk’s damages figures extra broadly, saying the skilled’s method is unreliable and might mislead the jury.
