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Court filings released Friday Elon Musk seeking up to $134bn from OpenAI and Microsoft, saying he is entitled to recover “ill-gotten gains” the companies obtained from his early support of the artificial intelligence startup.
In a filing submitted to a federal court ahead of consideration of his lawsuit against the two companies, the billionaire entrepreneur says OpenAI earned between $65.5bn and $109.4bn as a result of his contributions after he co-founded the company in 2015, while Microsoft earned between $13.3bn and $25.1bn.
Lawyers for OpenAI, Microsoft and Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside business hours.
OpenAI describes the lawsuit as “baseless” and part of a campaign of “harassment” by Musk. A lawyer for Microsoft says there is no evidence the company “aided and abetted” OpenAI.
Musk, who left OpenAI in 2018 and now runs xAI, developer of the Grok chatbot, says OpenAI, developer of ChatGPT, violated its founding mission through a sweeping restructuring to shift towards a for-profit entity.
A judge in Oakland, California, ruled this month that the case should be heard by a jury, with the trial expected to begin in April.
According to the filing, Musk contributed about $38m, or 60% of OpenAI’s early seed funding, helped recruit staff, connected the founders with key contacts and lent credibility to the project at its inception.
The filing says the “ill-gotten gains obtained by OpenAI and Microsoft — which Musk is now entitled to recover — far exceed Mr Musk’s initial contributions”.
Reuters