Elon Musk, known for his ambitious tech projects, has escalated his legal battle against OpenAI and Microsoft. He is seeking $79B to $134B in alleged “wrongful gains” due to his early support of the companies. The move sets up a high-stakes jury trial set for April in Oakland, California.
According to his claim, Musk's stake in OpenAI is based on the company's $500B valuation. This places his approximately $38M in seed funding as the reason why OpenAI and its partner Microsoft have made dozens of billions of dollars. Simply put, Musk wants not just a refund, but startup-style upside in the growing company.
But OpenAI doesn't agree. In their new documents, they show that Musk himself supported the for-profit structure as long as he was in control. OpenAI also shows that Musk used the litigation to boost his AI company xAI. This highlights the tension between mission-driven labs and profit-driven strategies in tech.
At the heart of the controversy is the question: who really has the right to the profit margin when a nonprofit AI lab becomes a profit machine? Musk's expert says OpenAI earned $65.5B to $109.4B, while Microsoft could potentially earn an additional $13.3B to $25.1B. On the other hand, OpenAI laid out call notes, diary entries, and governance timelines to show that Musk dictated the profit structure and absolute control, but left before he could get everything.
This case shows how the AI industry is evolving from idealism to trillion-dollar valuations and contracts. For tech founders, investors, and developers, it's a real-time stress test of how mission, profit, and reputation are intertwined at the industry's largest companies. The April trial in Oakland is sure to be a rare spectacle in the legal and tech worlds.
