Musk files lawsuit against OpenAI, Microsoft
In a court filing submitted Friday, Musk alleges that OpenAI obtained “wrongful gains” from the $38 million he provided in seed funding in 2015. The filing estimates that OpenAI profited between $65.5 billion and $109.4 billion from that funding, while Microsoft—holding a 27% stake in OpenAI Group PBC since 2019—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,” said Musk’s lead trial lawyer, Steven Molo, citing financial economist C. Paul Wazzan, whose analysis is included in the filing.
OpenAI dismissed Musk’s claims as “baseless” and described them as part of a “harassment” campaign. Microsoft has not commented on the compensation request. Both companies also requested the court to exclude Wazzan’s analysis, calling it “made up” and “unverifiable.”
Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015, investing roughly $45 million in total, but left the board in 2018 due to strategic disagreements with CEO Sam Altman. Since then, he has criticized the company’s commercialization and close partnership with Microsoft. In February 2025, Musk offered to buy OpenAI for $97.4 billion to counter its for-profit shift, but Altman rejected the offer, jokingly suggesting he buy Musk’s social media platform X for $9.74 billion instead.
OpenAI surpassed Musk’s SpaceX as the world’s most valuable private tech company in October when it reached a $500 billion valuation after current and former employees sold about $6.6 billion in shares to a consortium of investors, as stated by reports.
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