Elon Musk Wins Ruling $134 Billion Fraud Trial Against OpenAI, But Will He Win The Trial?
Elon Musk won a pretrial ruling Friday that bars OpenAI from asking him about his alleged ketamine use when he testifies at the fraud trial scheduled to begin April 28 in Oakland, California.
Elon Musk won a pretrial ruling Friday that bars OpenAI from asking him about his alleged ketamine use when he testifies at the fraud trial scheduled to begin April 28 in Oakland, California. That is not the same as winning the trial — and the headline on the Yahoo Finance version of this story implied otherwise.
The actual case is a fraud and breach of fiduciary duty lawsuit in which Musk is seeking between $79 billion and $134 billion from OpenAI and Microsoft. He alleges the company abandoned its nonprofit founding agreement when it restructured to allow Microsoft to invest $13 billion and eventually convert to a for-profit with a nonprofit holding company. The trial will hear testimony from Altman, Musk, Brockman, OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, and former board member Shivon Zilis. Satya Nadella and former CTO Ermira Murati may also testify.
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers made a series of rulings Friday that shaped what the jury will and will not hear. On ketamine: OpenAI wanted to question Musk about his prescription ketamine use during key negotiations with the company, arguing his mental state was impaired. The judge said those questions are irrelevant unless OpenAI can produce concrete evidence about how ketamine affects cognition — a high bar the company has not met. She did allow limited questioning about Musk's attendance at Burning Man, where OpenAI's lawyers say "significant communications" occurred.
On damages: Musk's expert witness, financial economist C. Paul Wazzan of Berkeley Research Group, calculated the damages using a method that credits Musk with 50-75% of the nonprofit's early stake in the company based on his $38 million seed donation plus his "technical and business contributions" to the early team. The result is a range of $79 billion to $134 billion. The judge was blunt: "Do I find it convincing? Not really, not particularly persuasive." She called Wazzan's methodology "made up, results unverifiable, approach admittedly unprecedented." She also said the jury's damages determination will be advisory only — she sets the final figure herself.
OpenAI and Microsoft have called the claim frivolous. The companies' lawyers wrote that Musk was seeking "2,900 times what he invested in the startup." OpenAI has described the lawsuit as baseless and part of Musk's pattern of using litigation against competitors through xAI, his own AI company.
On Monday, Musk posted on X that any proceeds from a legal victory would go to charity and that he would not personally profit from the outcome. That does not change the legal calculus — the damages sought are the same regardless of where they end up.
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