In a court filing on Friday, Elon Musk is seeking up to $134 billion from OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming the “wrongful gains” that they received from his early support.
The billionaire entrepreneur contributed between $65.5 billion and $109.4 billion to OpenAI when he was co-founding what was then a startup in 2015, and Microsoft gained between $13.3 billion and $25.1 billion, Musk said in the federal court filing before his trial with the two companies.
Musk’s lead trial lawyer, Steven Molo, said in a statement to Reuters, “Without Elon Musk, there’d be no OpenAI. He provided the bulk of the seed funding, lent his reputation, and taught them all he knew about scaling a business. A pre-eminent expert quantified the value of that.”
In an announcement, OpenAI described it as an “unserious demand” by Musk and indicated it was a part of his “harassment campaign” against OpenAI.
Therefore, Microsoft refused to comment on the level of compensation that Musk is demanding after business hours. Throughout the week, OpenAI referred to the suit as “baseless” and part of a “harassment” campaign by Musk.
A Microsoft attorney has indicated that nobody has found evidence to prove that the company “aided and abetted” OpenAI. In a separate filing on Friday, the two companies disputed the damages claims brought forward by Musk.
Musk, who left OpenAI in 2018 and runs xAI, a competitor to ChatGPT, alleges that ChatGPT operator OpenAI has violated its founding mission through a high-profile restructuring into a for-profit entity.
A judge in Oakland, California, made a decision this month that a jury will hear the trial, expected to start in April.
In his filing, Musk contributed around $38 million, 60 percent of the initial seed funding raised by OpenAI, and assisted in the hiring of staff, introducing the founders to contacts, and bringing credibility to the project at its creation.
Musk reported, “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.”
The filing indicates that the expert witness on the case, financial economist C. Paul Wazzan, figured out Musk’s contributions to OpenAI and Microsoft.
The filing does not specify what a possible injunction would involve, but Musk may claim punitive damages and other penalties, including a potential injunction, in case either company is found guilty by the jury.
In their filing, OpenAI and Microsoft requested the judge to restrict what Musk can say to the jurors, claiming that his analysis should be omitted as “made up,” “unverifiable,” and “unprecedented,” and as seeking an “implausible” transfer of billions from a nonprofit to a former donor-turned-competitor.
The companies further challenged the damage amounts estimated by Musk in a broader sense, arguing that the method used by the expert is unreliable and may mislead the jury.
