Musk Seeks Up to $134 Billion from OpenAI, Escalating Legal and Valuation Stakes

New updates have been reported about OpenAI.

OpenAI faces a high-stakes legal and reputational challenge as Elon Musk pursues between $79 billion and $134 billion in damages from the company and its strategic partner Microsoft, based on a damages analysis disclosed in court filings and reported by Bloomberg. Musk’s expert, financial economist C. Paul Wazzan, ties the claim to OpenAI’s roughly $500 billion implied valuation, arguing that Musk’s $38 million in early funding plus his technical and business contributions as a co-founder entitle him to a substantial portion of the company’s current value; Wazzan calculates alleged wrongful gains of $65.5 billion to $109.4 billion attributable to OpenAI itself and $13.3 billion to $25.1 billion tied to Microsoft’s 27% economic stake. Musk’s legal team frames him as an early-stage investor who should receive returns “many orders of magnitude greater” than his initial contribution, effectively challenging the company’s shift from its original nonprofit mission to today’s capped-profit structure and deep commercial alignment with a major cloud partner.

For OpenAI, the claim size, while unlikely to be realized at face value, underscores material legal, financial, and governance risk: the case, set for trial in April in Oakland, California, could expose internal decision-making around its nonprofit-to-commercial evolution, its valuation logic, and the economics of its flagship partnership. OpenAI has already moved to shape the narrative with investors and business partners, circulating a letter warning that Musk will make “deliberately outlandish, attention-grabbing claims” and characterizing the litigation as part of an “ongoing pattern of harassment” rather than a bona fide financial dispute. Even though a maximum payout would be modest relative to Musk’s estimated $700 billion net worth, the litigation could influence investor perception of OpenAI’s governance, affect negotiations around future capital raises or secondary share sales at elevated valuations, and create headline and regulatory risk around the structure of nonprofit-origin AI labs converting to high-valuation commercial entities.