Khaberni - In what has been described as "the biggest legal showdown in Silicon Valley history", American billionaire and owner of Tesla and X companies, Elon Musk, topped the headlines after details of his claim for astronomical compensations amounting to $134 billion from OpenAI and its strategic partner Microsoft were revealed.
This case, which started as a disagreement over principles, has turned today into a comprehensive financial and legal battle that threatens to redraw the map of the future of artificial intelligence.
Musk's lawsuit, which has had its fillings updated in the federal court in Oakland, California, is based on a direct accusation against OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman and his partner Greg Brockman. Musk alleges that he was defrauded in 2015 when he was convinced to help establish OpenAI as a non-profit organization aimed at developing artificial intelligence that "benefits humanity" and is "open-source".
However, according to Reuters, Musk believes that the company has breached this moral and legal contract by turning into a "closed" commercial entity aiming to generate profits for Microsoft, which invested billions of dollars in OpenAI.
Why $134 Billion?
Musk's legal team has revealed precise figures for the demanded compensations, based on assessments by economic experts, which include "ill-gotten profits", with amounts ranging from $79 billion to $134 billion.
Musk's lawyers believe that their client provided 60% of the initial foundational funding in 2015 (about $38 million), and since the market value of OpenAI has recently jumped to $500 billion due to technologies they say Musk helped finance at the beginning, he deserves a share proportionate to that value, according to his lawyers.
According to the lawyers, estimates indicate that OpenAI earned "ill-gotten profits" between $65.5 and $109.4 billion, while Microsoft made between $13.3 and $25.1 billion as a result of this "commercial shift".
The Position of OpenAI and Microsoft
For its part, OpenAI, in an official statement relayed by Agence France-Presse, described these claims as "baseless, and part of an ongoing harassment campaign waged by Musk against the company due to success he could not achieve through his own company, X AI".
On its part, Microsoft has maintained cautious silence, although it is a principal party in the lawsuit, where Musk alleges that the partnership between it and OpenAI turned the latter into a "quasi-affiliate tech branch" for the software giant.
According to German news agency sources from judicial circles, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has set a crucial date for the trial to begin before a jury on April 27, 2026. The trial is expected to feature public testimonies from some of the world's leading technology leaders.
Observers believe that this case is not just a dispute over billions of dollars, but a struggle over the "soul" of artificial intelligence.
While Musk sees that the technology should remain open to everyone to prevent monopolization of power, Altman and Microsoft believe that massive investments and commercial entities are the only way to develop safe and powerful AI models.
