Musk Seeks Up to $110 Billion from OpenAI
If Elon Musk wins his breach of charitable trust lawsuit against OpenAI, the company should have to give up between $65.5 billion and $109.43 billion to Musk, lawyers for the billionaire argued in a court filing Friday. Microsoft, which Musk alleges aided and abetted OpenAI’s breach of fiduciary duty, is on the hook for between $13.3 billion and $25.06 billion, Musk’s lawyers argued.
Though Musk only donated about $38 million to help establish OpenAI, his lawyers argue that OpenAI should have to forfeit all of the benefits they gained as a result of those donations. The estimates of those benefits that Musk’s lawyers cited in their recent filing came from C. Paul Wazzan, an expert witness that Musk’s lawyers retained. Wazzan is an economist at Berkeley Research Group, an economic consulting firm. He arrived at the figures by taking the OpenAI nonprofit’s share of OpenAI’s business and assuming that Musk contributed between 50% and 75% of that value.