Elon Musk is intensifying his legal battle with OpenAI and Microsoft as the case heads toward a jury trial. The world’s richest person is now asking a US court to award him damages that could reach a staggering $134 billion from OpenAI and its closest partner, Microsoft, reports Bloomberg (citing a recent court filing). Notably, the lawsuit alleges fraud, breach of founding principles, and unfair financial gain, all tied to OpenAI’s recently announced transformation from a nonprofit research lab into a commercial AI powerhouse.
Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015, argues that the company’s evolution, driven by massive investments from Microsoft and an increasingly aggressive push toward commercialization, violated the principles under which he originally backed the project. He claims the shift weakened OpenAI’s original mission and allowed huge private profits to be made from an organization that was meant to serve the public interest.
According to court filings, Musk – who now runs a rival AI firm, xAI – states that he played a major role in OpenAI’s early development. He contributed around $38 million in seed funding, representing a majority of the organization’s initial capital, and played an active role in recruiting talent and shaping its early direction. At the time, OpenAI was structured as a nonprofit, with leaders publicly stressing that it would avoid commercial incentives that could distort AI development and concentrate power in the hands of a few corporations.
Musk’s lawsuit argues that OpenAI’s recent shift toward a for-profit structure and its dominant partnership with tech giants like Microsoft fundamentally departed from the company’s founding commitments. He claims OpenAI’s leadership prioritized rapid growth, market dominance, and revenue over its original mission, and that Microsoft knowingly benefited from this shift. The complaint says that both companies unfairly profited from Musk’s early contributions.
Meanwhile, to support the damages claim, Musk’s legal team relies on expert economic analysis estimating the value created as a direct result of his funding and involvement. The analysis places OpenAI’s alleged wrongful gains in the range of around $65 billion to more than $100 billion, while Microsoft’s gains from its OpenAI partnership are estimated at an additional $13 billion to $25 billion. Combined, those figures bring the total potential damages to about $134 billion, making the case one of the largest monetary claims ever seen in the technology sector.
The situation becomes even more notable because this is not the only legal action Musk or his companies have taken against OpenAI. In September 2025, Musk’s AI startup xAI filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging trade secret theft, claiming OpenAI improperly used confidential information to strengthen its own models. Earlier, in August 2025, xAI and X jointly filed a separate lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI in a federal court in Fort Worth, Texas. That case accuses Apple and OpenAI of working together to restrict competition in the AI market, allegedly giving ChatGPT preferential treatment and an unfair advantage over rival AI services, including xAI’s Grok chatbot.
In parallel, OpenAI has pushed back by countersuing Musk, accusing him of harassment and pursuing litigation in bad faith as part of a broader campaign against the company. However, despite those claims, the court has so far allowed Musk’s lawsuits to move forward, rejecting attempts by OpenAI and Microsoft to dismiss the cases before trial.
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