The judge overseeing Elon Musk’s breach of charitable trust lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft has ruled that damages expert C. Paul Wazzan may present testimony at trial estimating Microsoft’s liability at up to $25B, based on a $500B OpenAI valuation, Microsoft’s $115B net stake, and a calculation attributing up to 29% of that value to OpenAI’s charitable origins and 75% of that charitable credit to Musk’s early contributions. The judge rejected Microsoft’s argument that the analysis failed to isolate gains specifically tied to wrongdoing, ruling that aiding and abetting liability would make Microsoft responsible for all resulting harm, leaving the jury to determine which investments constitute aiding and abetting. The judge also allowed UC Berkeley computer science professor Stuart Russell to testify on AI safety risks, while barring him from presenting third-party estimates of the likelihood that AI causes catastrophic harm.
