On March 14, according to the Financial Times, Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its partner Microsoft.More than US$130 billionThe trial judge in the damages suit suggested the billionaire's claims were based on "fudge figures" but ruled he could still take the case to a jury.
Musk
At a pretrial hearing on Friday, lawyers for OpenAI tried to persuade Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers to throw out testimony from an expert witness supporting Musk's $134 billion request for damages.
Musk alleges that OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, defrauded him by abandoning its original non-profit mission after he made a charitable donation to the AI lab a decade ago. The case will be heard in April this year.
"The jury will understand that (Musk's expert witness) was making these numbers out of thin air," Rogers said during a pretrial hearing in the Northern District of California. "Do I find that persuasive? Not really. Based on what I've seen, do I find it particularly persuasive? Not really."
However, Rogers did not grant OpenAI's motion to dismiss the testimony, saying she would not make a decision based on just a "five-page motion" and would instead allow the jury to hear the evidence.
Calculation of damages is at the heart of Musk’s lawsuit, if accepted by the jury,OpenAImay have to pay$109 billioncompensation,MicrosoftYou need to pay compensation$25 billion.
Rogers told the court on Friday that if she granted OpenAI's motion to exclude Musk's expert witness testimony, "this trial would be over because they would have no evidence of damages, right?"
Musk's $134 billion claim is based on an analysis by expert witness C Paul Wazzan. Vozan is an economist at consulting firm Berkeley Research Group and a venture capitalist. Vozan concluded that Musk's $38 million in early donations, combined with his non-monetary contributions to OpenAI, accounted for 50% to 75% of the value of OpenAI's nonprofit sector. The nonprofit unit holds just over a quarter of OpenAI's for-profit business, which was recently valued at $730 billion.
OpenAI's lawyers sought to exclude parts of Vozan's testimony. William Savitt, a partner at the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, argued on Friday that Vozan's conclusions were not based on reasonable extrapolations and questioned his analytical methods.
The case is scheduled to be heard on April 28. At that time, Musk's lawyers will try to prove that OpenAI and Altman breached the contract and committed fraud against Musk.