U.S. media including Bloomberg reported that Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk has sought up to 198 trillion won in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft (MS).
Musk's legal team said in a document filed with the court on the 16th local time that OpenAI deceived him by abandoning its nonprofit principles and joining hands with MS, and demanded up to $134 billion (about 198 trillion won) in damages. Musk's side says that when OpenAI was founded in 2015, he donated $38 million in seed money, but as OpenAI later veered from its nonprofit purpose, his rights were infringed.
The gist is that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman deceived him by saying he would develop open-source AI technology for the benefit of humanity to counter Google's "DeepMind." Musk says he trusted Altman's remarks and invested a large sum when OpenAI was founded in 2015, but OpenAI later abandoned its initial mission and began pursuing profit, including by taking investment from MS.
Musk's side argues it has rights to a significant portion of OpenAI's current $500 billion corporate value. Accordingly, in the complaint, Musk's side, citing estimates by financial economist C. Paul Wazzan, calculated OpenAI's unjust enrichment at about $6.55 billion to $10.94 billion and MS's share at about $1.33 billion to $2.51 billion.
Musk also plans to seek punitive damages against them. After leaving the OpenAI board in 2018, Musk founded his own AI company in 2023, and in 2024 he clashed with OpenAI CEO Altman over plans to commercialize and filed suit. OpenAI said in a statement that "Musk's lawsuit is baseless, ongoing harassment" and added, "We look forward to proving this at trial."