Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and former chief scientist of OpenAI, testified in federal court that his ownership stake in the company is worth approximately $7 billion. The disclosure came during a May 11 hearing tied to Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman.
Musk's suit alleges OpenAI abandoned its nonprofit mission for profit-driven goals, citing massive insider payouts as evidence. Sutskever also referenced a 2018 email describing Musk as "the strongest founder/CEO in the world."
Sutskever left OpenAI in May 2024 after a turbulent period that included helping oust Altman as CEO in late 2023. He now leads Safe Superintelligence Inc., a startup focused on safe AI development.
OpenAI's valuation now exceeds $100 billion. The original nonprofit structure proved financially unsustainable due to the high compute costs of training frontier AI models, prompting a "capped profit" subsidiary in 2019. Musk's lawsuit argues this cap was a facade.
The case could force structural changes at OpenAI, particularly regarding profit distribution.