Elon Musk has filed a $134 billion lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming both companies unfairly benefited from his early support of the artificial intelligence pioneer and abandoned their founding mission.
In a federal court filing Friday, Elon Musk’s lawyers said OpenAI raised between $65.5 billion and $109.4 billion based on Musk’s initial funding, reputation and strategic input after he co-founded the organization in 2015. Microsoft, which owns an estimated 27 percent of OpenAI, is said to have benefited between $13.3 billion and $25.1 billion.
Musk’s legal team argues that OpenAI, now best known for ChatGPT, would not exist in its current form without his early involvement. His lawyer, Steven Molo, said Musk provided the “majority of the seed funding,” gave the company credibility and shared his expertise in scaling tech companies.
Musk left OpenAI in 2018 due to disagreements over its direction and governance. He now claims the company violated its original nonprofit mission by restructuring itself into a more commercially-oriented entity, a move aimed at attracting huge sums of capital to fund its AI ambitions.
OpenAI completed a major restructuring with Microsoft last year, valuing the company at $500 billion. Under the new structure, a nonprofit OpenAI foundation will hold shares in a for-profit arm that can raise funds from outside investors.
OpenAI dismissed Musk’s claim as “frivolous” and accused him of running an ongoing harassment campaign against the company. Microsoft and OpenAI jointly asked the court to limit the evidence presented by Musk’s expert, financial economist C Paul Wazzan, arguing that the damages estimates were speculative, unverifiable and misleading.
The companies claim that Musk’s attempt to reclaim “ill-gotten gains” amounts to an unprecedented transfer of value from a nonprofit to a former donor who is now a competitor in the AI race.
The case is scheduled to be heard by a jury in Oakland, California. The trial is expected to begin in April. The dispute adds another chapter to the increasingly bitter rivalry between Musk and Sam Altman and highlights the growing legal and commercial tensions surrounding the global AI boom.
