The humiliating cross-examination of Elon Musk
A blockbuster trial pitting Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman kicked off this week in Oakland, California. Musk sued OpenAI, claiming that company executives, including Altman and President Greg Brockman unjustly enriched themselves by straying from OpenAI’s non-profit mission. Musk contributed about $38 million to OpenAI in its early days, when it was structured as a non-profit. OpenAI has since transformed to a hybrid structure, with its for-profit arm raising tens of billions of dollars. Musk founded a competing for-profit AI company, xAI, in 2023.
Musk is asking for $134 billion in damages and for OpenAI to return to a non-profit structure.
In his opening statement, Musk attorney Steve Molo told the jury, “we are here today because the defendants in this case stole a charity.” Musk left OpenAI in February 2018, citing a conflict with his role at Tesla, which was also developing AI capabilities. OpenAI created a for-profit subsidiary in 2019.
Musk was the first witness, testifying for hours. “I gave them $38 million of essentially free funding, which they used to create an $800 billion for-profit company,” Musk said. He framed his lawsuit as an effort to protect the greater good. “If we make it okay to loot a charity the entire foundation of charitable giving in America will be destroyed,” Musk declared.
Emails uncovered as part of the discovery process, however, revealed that Musk had previously embraced moving OpenAI to a for-profit model. “[Google] Deepmind is moving very fast,” Musk wrote to a colleague at another one of his companies, Neuralink, in 2016. “I am concerned that OpenAI is not on a path to catch up. Setting it up as non-profit might, in hindsight, have been the wrong move. Sense of urgency is not as high.” Before leaving, Musk sought control of a new for-profit arm, seeking a majority of board seats and 51% of shares. He only left after Altman and Brockman refused his demands.
Musk’s cross-examination revealed his loose relationship with the truth and selective short-term memory. At one point, Musk testified that Tesla was not pursuing artificial general intelligence (AGI). “No, Tesla is not pursuing AGI. It’s literally trying to make a car drive from A to B,” Musk said. The defense attorney then pulled up an X post from March when Musk said, explicitly, that Tesla was pursuing AGI.
During the cross-examination, Musk was comically reluctant to concede even the most basic facts. Asked whether he was romantically involved with venture capitalist Shivon Zilis, Musk replied, “I think so.” Zilis is the mother of four of Musk’s children.
Before the trial’s conclusion, Altman, Brockman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella are all expected to testify. The lawsuit resumes on Monday.
Musk’s posts increasingly focused on “perceived threats to Whiteness”
The Washington Post reports that “Musk has recently significantly increased his rate of online posts about race and his concerns about perceived threats to Whiteness or what he views as calls for a ‘genocide’ against White people.” According to the Post, Musk “has posted on X about race nearly daily — 166 out of 197 days — from last October to mid-April.”
In addition to claiming that White people are subjected to unrelenting vitriol, Musk has suggested that race plays a detrimental role in hiring, touted the role of White people in eliminating slavery, and accused public figures and even an AI tool that competes against his own chatbot, Grok, of racism against White and Asian people. He has plunged into political debates about his native South Africa, which he claims has widely discriminated against White people in the post-apartheid era.
“As far as I can tell, Musk at this point agrees with standard talking points of white supremacy,” Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said. Ashley Jardina, associate professor of public policy and politics at the University of Virginia, described Musk’s posts as “standard white supremacy.”
Larry Ellison’s massive debt
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is not just one of the world’s richest people — he’s also “one of the world’s most indebted men,” the Wall Street Journal reports. Ellison has “borrowed heavily against his stake in Oracle, the software company he co-founded almost 50 years ago, to fund a lifestyle that includes superyachts, 98% of a Hawaiian island and his son’s foray into Hollywood.”
Ellison recently guaranteed another $40 billion to facilitate his son David Ellison’s purchase of Warner Brothers.
The risk of this approach is that a “drop in the share price could lead lenders to sell some of an executive’s stake to keep debts in line with the value of the underlying collateral.” That process could further decrease the value of the shares. The value of Ellison’s stake in Oracle has plunged 50% since September 2025.
Inside the Thiel-funded enhanced games
Vanity Fair takes an in-depth look at the Enhanced Games, a competition funded by billionaire Peter Thiel, where the use of performance enhancing drugs is not just permitted — it is the whole point.
In a world where most Olympic athletes barely make enough money to survive, the Enhanced Games is offering hard, fast cash—a million dollars to break a world record, $250,000 to win a race, plus paid-appearance opportunities and a base salary in the mid to high six figures—all for 12 weeks of workouts and supervised PEDs at a five-star Emirati resort. (Never mind the full-scale military conflict unfolding in their backyard.) The long-awaited competition takes place in Las Vegas on May 24.
…Eventually, [the Enhanced Games will] be able to sell some of the medications athletes took to go faster and get stronger alongside others that the games’ independent medical board has deemed insufficiently researched to administer to elite athletes at this time. “The previous administration almost had [the games] stopped in its tracks,” says Guido Pieles, chairman of the Enhanced Games Independent Medical Commission, but a White House helmed by Trump and JD Vance—one of Thiel’s many mentees—seemed to feel differently.
Aron D’Souza, the event’s cofounder, describes himself as “not much of a sports fan.”
Sergey Brin says wealth tax would turn California into the “Soviet Union”
Sergey Brin, the Google co-founder with a net worth of over $300 billion, said a one-time 5% tax on the assets of California billionaires would destroy the state. “I fled socialism with my family in 1979 and know the devastating, oppressive society it created in the Soviet Union,” Brin told the New York Times. “I don’t want California to end up in the same place.”
Brin is spending tens of millions to defeat the proposed ballot initiative. The money is being used to fund competing ballot measures that would undermine the wealth tax.
Zuckerberg says layoffs are necessary to pay for AI spending
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees that layoffs are necessary to buy more computing infrastructure to develop AI. “We basically have two major cost centers in the company: compute infrastructure and people-oriented things,” Zuckerberg said. “If we’re investing more in one area to serve our community, then that means we have less capital to allocate to the other. So that means we do need to take down the size of the company somewhat.”
Meanwhile, Reuters reports, Meta is “installing new tracking software on U.S.-based employees’ computers to capture mouse movements, clicks and keystrokes for use in training its artificial intelligence models.”
Meta threatens to shut down apps in New Mexico
In March, a New Mexico jury found that Meta failed to protect children from sexual predators, violating state law. The company was ordered to pay $375 million in civil penalties. In the next phase of the trial, a court will determine what steps Meta must take to remedy the issues. In a Thursday filing, Meta said that New Mexico’s requests to protect children are “so broad and so burdensome, that if implemented it might force Meta to withdraw its apps entirely from the State of New Mexico as an alternative way of complying with the injunction.” New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said Meta was “showing the world how little it cares about child safety.”
Amazon considering “Apprentice” reboot starring Donald Trump Jr.
Amazon is considering rebooting “The Apprentice,” the reality show which starred Donald Trump for 14 seasons, with Donald Trump Jr. as the new host, the Wall Street Journal reports:
Amazon’s deliberations about rebooting the TV show—and potentially casting Trump’s son in the starring role—is the latest example of how it has sought programming that would appeal to the president and his base of conservative supporters. In some instances, the first family has profited from the push.
…Amazon agreed to pay $40 million to distribute “Melania,” the documentary that followed the first lady during the first weeks of the second term. Amazon’s involvement in the documentary drew scrutiny from some employees within its studio business, according to people familiar with the matter. The price Amazon paid was nearly three times the next highest offer for the film, and The Journal reported that Melania Trump’s cut was more than 70%.
Amazon, founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, already bought the show’s back catalog, which originally aired on NBC. This week, Bezos attended the White House state dinner with King Charles.
Meta pulling out of NM could be the best thing to happen to that state, and maybe others could follow when they see how much the happier everyone is. Seriously, is it not up to us to stop using the oligarch's platforms?
How IRONIC that musk is objecting to others working for profit. I’m not aware of any philanthropic ventures in which musk has immersed his funds -like his crony felon47, they steal and grab rather than give to help others. Musk is a human leech.