A federal judge has openly questioned Elon Musk’s $134 billion damages claim in his lawsuit against OpenAI, suggesting the figure may be based on “numbers out of the air” as the case moves forward to a jury trial.
During a pretrial hearing on 13 March, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers expressed scepticism about the reasoning behind Musk’s valuation, raising doubts over the method used to calculate alleged harm to the AI research company.
Despite her reservations, Judge Rogers refused to dismiss evidence from Musk’s key expert witness, economist C. Paul Wazzan of Berkeley Research Group.
“Do I find it convincing? Not really. Based on what I’ve seen, do I find it particularly persuasive? Not really,” she stated. However, she acknowledged the importance of letting a jury hear the evidence, warning that striking it at this stage could prematurely end the trial.
Musk’s legal challenge centres on his early involvement with OpenAI, the influential artificial intelligence organisation he helped found. He claims that OpenAI defrauded him by abandoning its nonprofit roots after he made significant early contributions, including a $38 million donation and advisory support.
Wazzan’s analysis attempts to convert those contributions into a share of the value of OpenAI’s nonprofit arm, which retains a controlling interest in the company’s for-profit entity – recently valued at around $730 billion.
According to Musk’s legal team, his early backing constitutes between 50% and 75% of the nonprofit’s stake in OpenAI. OpenAI has strongly contested this calculation, arguing that Wazzan’s testimony is speculative and does not meet the standards for reliable expert analysis.
The company’s lawyers have sought to exclude the evidence, portraying the lawsuit as a commercially motivated move by Musk, now the founder of xAI, a direct competitor in the generative AI sector. In court filings, OpenAI described the action as “an ongoing pattern of harassment.”
The case is set for a full jury trial in April at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
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