Elon Musk Demands $134 Billion from OpenAI and Microsoft

Following years of legal disputes between Elon Musk and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, the Tesla CEO is now seeking up to $134 billion from OpenAI and its largest investor, Microsoft. In the newest court filing, Musk’s lawyers allege that OpenAI gained between $65.5 billion and $109.4 billion as a result of his contributions to the company. Microsoft allegedly gained between $13.3 billion and $25.1 billion. Musk’s lawyers claim that his contributions include not just the $38 million in seed funding he provided during OpenAI’s early years—roughly 60% of the nonprofit’s seed funding—but also his nonmonetary contributions. These include recruiting early employees, providing business contacts, and lending his “prestige and reputation” to the venture. OpenAI has been quick to clap back at Musk’s claims. In an official blog post, the company accuses Musk of cherry-picking and publishes snippets from private journal entries written by OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman, without appropriate context. “Elon’s latest variant of this lawsuit is his fourth attempt at these particular claims, and part of a broader strategy of harassment aimed at slowing us down and advantaging his own AI company, xAI,” the blog post reads. OpenAI accuses Musk of “grossly misrepresenting the written record to further his harassment.” The company claims that Musk said he wanted to accumulate $80 billion for a self-sustaining city on Mars during earlier conversations, and that “he needed and deserved majority equity.” He allegedly also talked about “his children controlling Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).” This refers to a hypothetical type of AI that would surpass human capabilities across virtually all cognitive tasks, rather than merely solving narrow tasks like current models. Musk first sued OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman in March 2024, claiming the company had committed a breach of contract because OpenAI strayed from its founding mission as a nonprofit. Though the original lawsuit was dropped, Musk later launched another lawsuit alleging wire fraud and numerous other crimes. His legal team later filed an injunction to stop it from transitioning into a for-profit company, followed by a takeover bid involving a consortium of investors in early 2025 (which was unanimously rejected by the board).