Tags: Elon Musk

Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, took the stand Wednesday in a California federal courtroom, facing a lawsuit filed by Elon Musk. The case, stemming from a rift that began when Musk invested $38 million in OpenAI’s early days, seeks to overturn the company’s for‑profit restructuring and strip Altman and co‑founder Greg Brockman of leadership roles. Testimony so far has included senior figures from Microsoft and former OpenAI insiders, underscoring the high‑stakes clash between two of the tech world’s most prominent AI pioneers. Read more

Former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever told a California federal court that his ownership in the artificial‑intelligence firm is worth about $7 billion. The disclosure, made during Elon Musk’s litigation over OpenAI’s shift from nonprofit to capped‑profit status, positions Sutskever among the company’s largest individual shareholders. The testimony adds a new data point to the case, which challenges the governance changes that accompanied OpenAI’s $852 billion valuation. Read more

xAI has rolled out Grok Voice Mode for Apple CarPlay, letting drivers converse with Elon Musk’s outspoken AI assistant straight from the dashboard. The feature arrives with the latest Grok iPhone app update and can be launched manually through CarPlay, though it lacks a wake word and cannot control vehicle functions like climate or navigation. By moving beyond Tesla’s limited integration, the rollout opens Grok to millions of iPhone users and puts it in direct competition with other third‑party voice assistants on the platform. Read more

The Vergecast highlighted the chaotic succession at OpenAI that unfolded after Sam Altman's 2024 ouster, a turmoil now on display in the Musk‑Altman trial. Text exchanges between Altman and former chief technology officer Mira Murati have become viral memes, underscoring the disorder. The episode also noted persistent rumors that OpenAI plans to launch its own smartphone—a move described as logical yet seemingly doomed. Additional tech news covered the new Fitbit Air, a home robot from iRobot founder Colin Angle, and a lawsuit over Apple’s Siri ads. Read more

Emails between senior Microsoft leaders, presented in the Elon Musk versus Sam Altman lawsuit, show the tech giant hesitated to pour additional funding into OpenAI as early as 2017. Executives questioned the lab’s progress toward artificial general intelligence and worried a funding shortfall could drive the AI startup to rival Amazon. The correspondence predates Microsoft’s landmark $1 billion investment in 2019, highlighting a cautious start to what would become one of tech’s most celebrated partnerships. Read more

Elon Musk’s legal action against OpenAI alleges that the lab’s for‑profit arm has abandoned its original safety mission in favor of rapid product rollout. In a federal court in Oakland, former employee and board member Rosie Campbell testified that key safety teams were disbanded and that a Microsoft‑deployed GPT‑4 model entered the Indian market without clearance from OpenAI’s Deployment Safety Board. The case also highlights internal board disputes, CEO Sam Altman’s alleged nondisclosure, and expert testimony that the organization’s governance now favors profit over safety, fueling calls for stricter AI regulation. Read more

Elon Musk's SpaceX has signed a data‑center agreement that grants Anthropic access to more than 200,000 Nvidia GPUs at the Colossus 1 supercomputer in Tennessee. The partnership, announced after Musk previously accused Anthropic of stealing training data, will boost capacity for the company's Claude Pro and Claude Max services and includes plans to explore gigawatt‑scale orbital AI compute. Anthropic responded by doubling usage limits for several products and listing other data‑center deals with Amazon, Google and Microsoft. The deal has drawn criticism from the NAACP, which alleges environmental harm to Black communities near the Tennessee facility. Read more

Elon Musk's xAI and Anthropic announced Wednesday that the Claude-maker will purchase the entire 300‑megawatt compute capacity of xAI's Colossus 1 data center. The move instantly lifts Anthropic's usage limits and monetizes a key xAI asset, turning the startup from a consumer of AI power into a cloud‑service provider. Musk said the purchase frees up Colossus 1 as xAI shifts its training workloads to a newer facility, Colossus 2, and aligns with the company's broader push toward an IPO and a space‑based data‑center vision. Read more

Anthropic announced a deal with Elon Musk’s merged SpaceXAI to draw computing power from the company’s Colossus 1 supercomputer in Memphis, Tennessee. The agreement, unveiled at Anthropic’s developer conference, gives the AI lab access to more than 300 megawatts of capacity – roughly 220,000 Nvidia GPUs – to boost its Claude Pro and Claude Max services. SpaceXAI, which is eyeing an imminent IPO, hopes the partnership will validate its push toward orbital AI compute centers. The pact marks a sharp turn from Musk’s earlier criticism of Anthropic’s models. Read more

Elon Musk left OpenAI's board in early 2018 after a heated dispute with co‑founders over control of the nonprofit's future. The disagreement, which began in 2017 when Musk demanded full authority over a planned for‑profit arm, led to a breakdown in funding and eventually a legal battle that began in 2024. Testimony from OpenAI president Greg Brockman, including excerpts from his private journal, revealed the tension behind the scenes. The conflict has resurfaced as courts examine whether Musk’s departure was voluntary or forced, and how the organization’s governance evolved into the AI powerhouse it is today. Read more

Anthropic announced that a new partnership with SpaceX will give the AI firm access to the launch‑provider’s Colossus 1 data center, adding more than 300 megawatts of compute capacity. The boost allows the company to double five‑hour rate limits for paid Claude Code users, lift peak‑hour restrictions for Pro and Max plans, and raise API limits for Claude Opus models. Anthropic also signaled interest in developing gigawatts of orbital AI compute, while SpaceX has filed FCC paperwork to launch a million satellites for a future orbital data center. Read more