Elon Musk Just Asked for $134 Billion From OpenAI—Here’s Why He Thinks They Owe Him
Elon Musk wants OpenAI and Microsoft to pay him somewhere between $79 billion and $134 billion. His reason? He claims OpenAI betrayed its original nonprofit mission and defrauded him in the process. Bloomberg broke the story about these eye-watering damages.
The figure comes from C. Paul Wazzan, a financial economist who specializes in calculating damages for complex commercial disputes. Wazzan has built his career on these evaluations—nearly 100 depositions and over a dozen court testimonies speak to his experience in the field.
Breaking Down the Massive Number
Wazzan’s calculation ties directly to OpenAI’s current $500 billion valuation. He argues that Musk deserves a substantial piece of that pie based on his $38 million seed investment from 2015, when he helped launch the organization. Factor in his early technical contributions and business guidance, and the numbers start climbing fast.
The math works out to roughly 3,500 times Musk’s original investment. Wazzan puts OpenAI’s alleged wrongful profits between $65.5 billion and $109.4 billion. Microsoft doesn’t escape the calculation either—Wazzan assigns between $13.3 billion and $25.1 billion in gains to the tech giant, which currently holds a 27% stake in OpenAI.
What Musk’s Lawyers Argue
Musk’s legal team frames this as a standard early-stage investor scenario. They contend he deserves returns “many orders of magnitude greater” than his initial contribution—exactly what early backers typically receive when startups explode in value. But the sheer scale of the demand suggests this fight runs deeper than just recovering an investment.
Context matters here: Musk’s personal fortune sits at approximately $700 billion, making him the planet’s wealthiest person. Reuters recently noted that he outpaces Larry Page by roughly $500 billion, according to Forbes’ latest rankings. Tesla shareholders just approved a separate $1 trillion compensation package for him in November—the largest corporate payout in history.
OpenAI Fires Back
Given those numbers, even a $134 billion settlement would barely move the needle on Musk’s total wealth. OpenAI sees through this calculation. The company has labeled the lawsuit part of Musk’s “ongoing pattern of harassment” rather than a genuine financial claim.
OpenAI reportedly sent a letter to investors and business partners this past Thursday. The message warned that Musk would continue making “deliberately outlandish, attention-grabbing claims” as the case approaches trial. The courtroom showdown begins in April at an Oakland, California courthouse—just 15 miles east of San Francisco.
