- Elon Musk vows to donate any legal victory proceeds from his lawsuit against OpenAI to charity.
- A California judge called Musk’s $134 billion damage claim, based on an expert witness calculation, “unconvincing.”
- A jury trial over Musk’s fraud allegations against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman is set to begin on April 28.
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has pledged that all proceeds from a potential legal victory in his high-profile case against OpenAI will go to charity. “I will in no way enrich myself,” he said on X, following court proceedings where a judge cast significant doubt on the financial basis of his claim.
OpenAI recently shifted to a for-profit corporate structure, a move Musk alleges defrauded him after his early charitable donations. Consequently, Musk sued the AI lab and its CEO, Sam Altman, for $134 billion in 2024, claiming the company abandoned its nonprofit mission to benefit humanity. However, a California judge questioned the enormous damages calculation presented by Musk’s expert witness.
The expert, economist C. Paul Wazzan, argued Musk’s $38 million donation accounted for up to 75% of OpenAI‘s nonprofit value. According to a report in The Information, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said, “Do I find it convincing? Not really.” Meanwhile, she denied OpenAI‘s request to remove the calculation, allowing a jury to decide its validity during the trial starting April 28.
Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but left in 2018 and later founded rival xAI. His lawsuit centers on claims that the AI lab’s pivot to commercial gain breached its original founding agreement. The outcome now hinges on whether a jury accepts the contested financial assessment linking Musk’s early contributions to the company’s current multi-billion dollar valuation.
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