Elon Musk wants a staggering $79 billion to $134 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming the AI company defrauded him into abandoning its nonprofit mission, Bloomberg reports. Reported for the first time. This figure comes from expert witness C. Paul Wazzan, a financial economist whose resume says he has been impeached nearly 100 times and has testified at trial more than a dozen times in complex business litigation cases.
Wazzan, who specializes in valuation and calculations of damages in high-stakes disputes, decided that Musk was entitled to a significant portion of OpenAI’s current $500 billion valuation based on his initial $38 million donation when he co-founded the startup in 2015. (If you’re wondering, that’s a 3,500x return on Musk’s investment.)
Al Wazzan’s analysis combines Musk’s initial financial contributions with the technical knowledge and business contributions he made to the early OpenAI team, calculating ill-gotten gains ranging from $65.5 billion to $109.4 billion for OpenAI and $13.3 billion to $25.1 billion for Microsoft, which today owns OpenAI. piece 27% From the company.
Musk’s legal team argues that he should be compensated as an early investor in startups who saw returns “significantly greater” than his initial investment. But the sheer size of the damages claim underscores that this legal battle isn’t really about the money.
Musk’s personal wealth currently stands at approximately $700 billion, making him the richest person in the world by a wide margin. As Reuters Recently noticedHis wealth now exceeds that of Larry Page, one of Google’s founders and the second richest person in the world, 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.
Against this backdrop, a $134 billion payout from OpenAI would represent a relatively modest addition to Musk’s wealth, likely reinforcing for OpenAI insiders their characterization of the lawsuit as part of an “ongoing pattern of harassment” rather than a legitimate financial complaint. OpenAI already He reportedly sent a message on Thursday to investors and other business partners, warning that Musk will make “deliberately bizarre and gimmicky claims” as his lawsuit against the company heads to trial in April. The case is scheduled to be heard in Oakland, California, about 15 miles east of San Francisco.
