Elon Musk vs OpenAI Escalates as Tesla CEO Seeks Up to $134bn from ChatGPT Maker

Billionaire Elon Musk, who is seeking up to $134 billion from OpenAI and Microsoft, said on Monday that he would not pocket a single dollar of any winnings.

"Btw, the proceeds of any legal victory in the OpenAI case will be donated to charity. I will in no way enrich myself," he wrote on X.

The world's most valuable artificial intelligence (AI) company may owe its greatest debt not to a nation, a sovereign wealth fund, or a technology conglomerate but to a man who now runs its competitor.

Musk, co-founder of OpenAI and current CEO of its rival venture xAI, is asking a California jury to decide whether OpenAI and its deep-pocketed ally Microsoft owe him somewhere 3,500 fold return. The trial is scheduled for 27 April in Oakland, and it promises to be the most-watched courtroom battle in the history of the technology industry.

Musk contributed roughly $38 million to OpenAI in 2015, accounting for 60% of OpenAI's early seed funding. What he is claiming now, however, is not a return on that investment in any ordinary sense. He argues he is entitled to the "wrongful gains" earned by OpenAI and Microsoft from his contributions during the company's early years, as a nonprofit, with the results shared openly for the benefit of all humanity.

The Numbers

Financial economist C. Paul Wazzan told The Information that OpenAI could owe Musk somewhere near $109 billion. This is based on a calculation of what his early equity-like stake would be worth today had the company honoured its original nonprofit structure.

OpenAI, however, argues the methodology is "made up," "unverifiable," and "unprecedented" — and that it effectively treats Musk as though he had held an equity stake in a nonprofit, which is legally impossible. Donors, they point out, do not receive financial ownership interests.

What Court Says

During a pretrial hearing on March 13, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers also expressed scepticism about the reasoning behind Musk's valuation, raising doubts over the method used to calculate alleged harm.

However, she acknowledged the importance of letting a jury hear the evidence, warning that striking it at this stage could prematurely end the trial.

OpenAI's Retaliates

OpenAI has not been passive. The company has mounted an aggressive public and legal campaign to frame the lawsuit as commercially motivated mischief. OpenAI describes this as Musk's "fourth variant" of the same lawsuit, calling it a strategy of harassment aimed at slowing the company down and advantaging xAI.

The company has also sought to challenge the narrative Musk tells about his own founding role. Internal documents, reportedly, reveal that as early as 2017, OpenAI's founders were privately discussing the need to move towards a for-profit structure, not because they had abandoned their principles but because they had concluded the mission required far more capital than charity could ever provide.