Elon Musk is seeking between $79 billion and $134 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming the AI company defrauded him by abandoning its nonprofit mission, Bloomberg first reported. The figure comes from expert witness C. Paul Wazzan, a financial economist whose biography indicates he has been deposed nearly 100 times and testified at trial more than a dozen times in complex commercial litigation cases.
Wazzan, who specializes in valuing and calculating damages in high-stakes litigation, determined that Musk was entitled to a significant portion of OpenAI’s current $500 billion valuation, based on his $38 million seed donation when he co-founded the startup in 2015. (If you’re wondering, that would mean a 3,500x return on Musk’s investment.)
Wazzan’s analysis combines Musk’s initial financial contributions with the technical know-how and business contributions he offered to OpenAI’s first team, calculating improper gains of $65.5 billion to $109.4 billion for OpenAI and $13.3 billion to $25.1 billion for Microsoft, which now owns 27 percent of the company.
Musk’s legal team argues he should be compensated as an early investor in a startup that sees returns “several orders of magnitude greater” than his initial investment. But the sheer scale of the damages sought underscores that this legal battle is not really about money.
Musk’s personal fortune currently stands at around $700 billion, making him the richest person in the world by far. As Reuters recently noted, his wealth now surpasses that of Google co-founder Larry Page, the world’s second-richest person, by a staggering $500 billion, according to Forbes’ billionaires list. In November, Tesla shareholders separately approved a $1 trillion pay package for Musk, the largest corporate pay package in history.
In this context, even a $134 billion payment from OpenAI would represent a relatively modest addition to Musk’s wealth, likely reinforcing for OpenAI members their characterization of the lawsuit as part of a “pattern of ongoing harassment” rather than a legitimate financial grievance. OpenAI reportedly already sent a letter Thursday to investors and other of its business partners, warning that Musk would make “deliberately outlandish and attention-grabbing claims” as his lawsuit against the company heads toward trial in April. The case will be heard in Oakland, California, about 15 miles east of San Francisco.
