By Jessica Newman
Publication Date: 2026-01-18 18:05:00
Elon Musk is seeking damages of up to $134 billion from OpenAI and its long-time backer Microsoft, claiming he deserves the “wrongful gains” both companies received from his early support.
In a federal court filing on Friday, Musk’s lawyer claimed the ChatGPT owner gained between $65.5 billion and $109.4 billion from Musk’s contributions when he co-founded OpenAI with its chief executive Sam Altman in 2015, while Microsoft, which has a 27 per cent stake in OpenAI, gained between $13.3 billion and $25.1 billion.
“Without Elon Musk, there’d be no OpenAI. He provided the bulk of the seed funding, lent his reputation, and taught them all he knows about scaling a business. A pre-eminent expert quantified the value of that,” Musk’s lawyer, Steven Molo, said.
Musk, who left OpenAI in 2018 after disagreements over the company’s direction, said he had contributed $38 billion of seed funding. Musk alleges that OpenAI violated its founding mission in a restructuring to a…
