Vol. I · No. 18THU, MAY 7, 2026
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Elon Musk appeared more petty than prepared

Today the first witness was sworn in in Musk v. Altman: Elon Musk. I was surprised by how flat he seemed. This is not the first time I've seen Musk in court. During his defamation suit, he turned on the charm and the jury responded by finding him not guilty. Today he looked adrift and unprepared. The only times he showed real animation were when he was bragging about how much he'd done for OpenAI. The direct examination is a way of telling a story through questions; it's important to make the narrative clear. For a suit that accuses Sam Altman of straying from OpenAI's mission, Musk spent a w...

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Elon Musk tells the jury that all he wants to do is save humanity

On the stand, Elon Musk is positioning himself as a savior. In the high-profile trial between him and his fellow OpenAI co-founder, now CEO, Sam Altman, Musk opened by going through his background. He went as far back as being raised in South Africa and arriving in Canada for college with "2,500 in Canadian travelers' checks and a bag of clothes and books," then spent an unusually long time talking about his past, from Zip2 to PayPal to the current, more familiar slate of companies he now runs. Why is Musk giving the jury so much of his origin story? Though he may be, depending on the day, th...

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Elon Musk takes the stand in high-profile trial against OpenAI

Elon Musk officially began his testimony in the trial he has brought against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and company president Greg Brockman. The three were on the initial founding team of OpenAI, with Musk investing up to $38 million early on before the co-founders' relationship soured over disagreements over company structure and mission, including whether or not OpenAI should be folded into Musk-owned Tesla. Musk walked away and, years later, founded xAI - his own direct competitor to OpenAI, which is now owned by Musk's SpaceX. In recent years, Musk has filed no less than four different lawsuit...

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Musk and Altman go to court

The trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI is officially upon us. And it is going to be a mess. As the two sides fight over the early days of AI, who deserves credit and cash for what, and more, we're likely to spend the next few weeks hearing a lot of important people's secrets made extremely public. Which may be exactly what Musk is going for. Verge subscribers, don't forget you get exclusive access to ad-free Vergecast wherever you get your podcasts. Head here. Not a subscriber? You can sign up here. On this episode of The Vergecast, The Verge's Liz Lopatto joins the show to explain the origin...

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Google and Pentagon reportedly agree deal for ‘any lawful’ use of AI

Google has signed a classified deal that allows the US Department of Defense to use its AI models for "any lawful government purpose," The Information reports. The agreement was reported less than a day after Google employees demanded CEO Sundar Pichai block the Pentagon from using its AI amid concerns that it would be used in "inhumane or extremely harmful ways." If the agreement is confirmed, it would place Google alongside OpenAI and xAI, which have also made classified AI deals with the US government. Anthropic was also among that list until it was blacklisted by the Pentagon for refusing...

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Anthropic hitting 40% enterprise share makes the "just add a fallback provider" advice weaker, not stronger

Menlo Ventures' enterprise survey put Anthropic at 40% of LLM spend, OpenAI at 27%. The takes I've seen are mostly about the leaderboard. The thing nobody's saying out loud: the standard agent-reliability advice ("don't depend on one provider, add a fallback") got harder to actually execute, not easier. When the split was closer to 50/30, both providers were realistic peers. You could run prod on one and have the other warm. Now most of us are running primarily on Claude — Sonnet for tool calls, Opus for harder stuff — and the "fallback" is a model we haven't tested against our actual prompt...

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Jury selection in Musk v. Altman: ‘People don’t like him’

On Monday, the courtroom battle between Elon Musk and Sam Altman over alleged broken promises at OpenAI started, as usual, with jury selection. The only tricky part? A lot of the prospective jurors already have an opinion about Elon Musk, and it's not a good one. The Verge reporter Elizabeth Lopatto, who was there at the courthouse, quoted statements from some of the juror questionnaires: "Elon Musk is a greedy, racist, homophobic piece of garbage." "Elon Musk is a world-class jerk." "I very much dislike Tesla. As a woman of color, I am very aware of the damaging statements and actions Elon M...

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Elon Musk and Sam Altman are going to court over OpenAI’s future

After a yearslong legal feud, Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are heading to trial this week in Northern California in a case that could have sweeping consequences. Ahead of OpenAI’s highly anticipated IPO, the court could rule on whether the company is allowed to exist as a for-profit enterprise and might even oust…

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Microsoft and OpenAI’s famed AGI agreement is dead

OpenAI and Microsoft's partnership-turned-situationship just got even less committed. And a clause about artificial general intelligence, which has for years dictated the future of their deal, has officially been dropped. On Monday morning, Microsoft announced a handful of big changes to its long-standing OpenAI deal. Microsoft will remain OpenAI's "primary cloud partner, and OpenAI products will ship first on Azure, unless Microsoft cannot and chooses not to support the necessary capabilities." But OpenAI can "now serve all its products to customers across any cloud provider." That lets Open...

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Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s court battle over the future of OpenAI

Sam Altman and Elon Musk are set to face off in a high-stakes trial that could alter the future of tech’s leading AI startup, OpenAI. The trial begins with jury selection on April 27th, as Musk pushes forward his 2024 lawsuit that accuses OpenAI of abandoning its founding mission of developing AI to benefit humanity and shifting focus to boosting profits instead. Musk was a cofounder of OpenAI and claims that Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman tricked him into giving the company money, only to turn their backs on their original goal. However, OpenAI says that “This lawsuit has always been a ...

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