Elon Musk says OpenAI and Microsoft owe him $134 billion
The world's money kings, perhaps even crazier, have reached unprecedented heights, whining for every penny.
Elon Musk’s lawyers say his contributions include not only the $38 million in seed funding he provided in the early years of OpenAI – about 60% of the nonprofit’s initial funding – but also in-kind contributions. These include recruiting early employees, maintaining business contacts, and providing “prestige and reputation” for the company.
After years of legal disputes, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is now seeking up to $134 billion from OpenAI and its largest investor, Microsoft. In a recent court filing, Musk’s lawyers say OpenAI earned between $65.5 billion and $109.4 billion from his contributions to the company. Microsoft is said to have earned between $13.3 billion and $25.1 billion.
Sam Altman’s company accuses Musk of random sampling and publishes excerpts from the personal blog posts of OpenAI founder and president Greg Brockman without proper 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 is also said to have spoken of “his children controlling artificial general intelligence (AGI).” This refers to a hypothetical type of AI that would surpass human capabilities in virtually all cognitive tasks, rather than just solving narrow tasks like current models.
Musk first sued OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, in March 2024, alleging that the company had breached its contract by deviating from its original mission as a non-profit organization. While the initial lawsuit was dismissed, Musk later filed another lawsuit alleging wire fraud and a host of other crimes.
His legal team later filed an injunction to prevent the company from becoming a for-profit company, and in early 2025, a consortium of investors made a bid to acquire the company (which was unanimously rejected by the board).
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