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Stage Set for Elon Musk’s Court Battle with OpenAI

Elon Musk looks on as US President Donald Trump speaks at the US-Saudi Investment Forum at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC on November 19, 2025. (AFP)
Elon Musk looks on as US President Donald Trump speaks at the US-Saudi Investment Forum at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC on November 19, 2025. (AFP)
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Stage Set for Elon Musk’s Court Battle with OpenAI

Elon Musk looks on as US President Donald Trump speaks at the US-Saudi Investment Forum at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC on November 19, 2025. (AFP)
Elon Musk looks on as US President Donald Trump speaks at the US-Saudi Investment Forum at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC on November 19, 2025. (AFP)

Elon Musk's lawsuit accusing high-profile artificial intelligence company OpenAI of betraying its non-profit mission heads for trial on Monday with the selection of jurors.

The legal clash in a courtroom across the bay from San Francisco pits the world's richest person against a startup Musk once backed and now competes with in the booming AI sector.

OpenAI's ChatGPT is a formidable rival to the chatbot Grok, made by Musk's xAI lab.

While Musk's lawsuit is part of a feud between him and OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman, it spotlights a debate as to whether AI should ultimately serve to benefit a privileged few or society as a whole.

Court filings lay out how Altman convinced Musk to back OpenAI in 2015, acting as a co-founder for a non-profit lab whose technology "would belong to the world."

Musk pumped millions of dollars into the lab, which he subsequently left.

However, OpenAI established a commercial subsidiary as it needed hundreds of billions of dollars for data centers to power its technology.

Microsoft has poured billions of dollars into OpenAI and its CEO Satya Nadella is among those slated to testify at the trial.

Musk argues in his lawsuit that he was deceived about OpenAI's mission being altruistic.

San Francisco-based OpenAI has countered in court filings that its break-up with Musk was due to his quest for absolute control rather than its nonprofit status.

"This case has always been about Elon generating more power and more money for what he wants," OpenAI said in a recent X post. "His lawsuit remains nothing more than a harassment campaign that's driven by ego, jealousy and a desire to slow down a competitor."

The startup noted that days after Musk entered the AI race in 2023 he called for a six-month moratorium on development of advanced AI.

The judge presiding over the trial will decide by mid-May -- guided by an advisory jury's findings -- whether OpenAI broke a promise to Musk in a drive to lead in AI or just smartly rode the technology to glory.

Along with calling for OpenAI to be forced to revert to a pure nonprofit, Musk's suit urges the ouster of Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman, who is startup president.

Musk, who had sought as much as $134 billion in damages, has since renounced any personal benefit, pledging to redirect any award to the OpenAI nonprofit. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has reserved the right to determine any remedies herself, without the jury's input.

OpenAI now has a hybrid governance structure giving its nonprofit foundation control over a for-profit arm.

Musk, who gutted the trust and safety team at Twitter after buying the social media platform that he renamed X, faces the challenge of convincing a jury and a judge that the company behind ChatGPT was built on a lie.

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Technology

Intense AI Use Still Rare Among Euro Zone Firms, ECB Researchers Find

FILE PHOTO: AI (Artificial Intelligence) letters and robot hand miniature in this illustration taken, June 23, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: AI (Artificial Intelligence) letters and robot hand miniature in this illustration taken, June 23, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
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Intense AI Use Still Rare Among Euro Zone Firms, ECB Researchers Find

FILE PHOTO: AI (Artificial Intelligence) letters and robot hand miniature in this illustration taken, June 23, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: AI (Artificial Intelligence) letters and robot hand miniature in this illustration taken, June 23, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

Only a small fraction of euro zone firms use artificial intelligence intensely and they tend to be small, young, service-oriented companies, leaving plenty of room for diffusion, a European Central Bank blog post said on Wednesday.

The vast majority of firms now say they have been using AI but economists have been debating just how intense this use is and whether it can yield the sort of efficiency gains that ⁠are relevant on a ⁠macroeconomic level.

Surveying more than 5,000 companies across the bloc, the ECB found that over 70% report using AI and much of the rest plan to start this year, Reuters reported. But use is moderate or infrequent and ⁠only 7% use AI intensely, the survey found.

"The intensive use that drives transformation and generates macroeconomic gains remains rare," the authors, all ECB researchers, said, in a post that does not necessarily represent the ECB's views.

Intense use is skewed towards smaller companies with large firms clearly lagging behind, the survey results showed. Younger firms also used AI more intensely than older companies ⁠and ⁠use was skewed towards high-tech, knowledge-intensive services.

"Firms at an early stage of adoption often cite cost reductions and improvements in operational efficiency as their main reasons for using it," the blog said. "Intensive users are more frequently motivated by growth and innovation."

Firms tend to invest in AI when their competitors do, succumbing to peer pressure, and intensive users spend heavily on customized solutions that go well beyond just purchasing licenses, the blog said.

Technology

Race for Robotaxi Market Arrives in London

A car from British autonomous driving technology company Wayve Technologies Ltd is pictured driving around the street, on the sidelines of London Tech Week in London on June 8, 2026. (AFP)
A car from British autonomous driving technology company Wayve Technologies Ltd is pictured driving around the street, on the sidelines of London Tech Week in London on June 8, 2026. (AFP)
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Race for Robotaxi Market Arrives in London

A car from British autonomous driving technology company Wayve Technologies Ltd is pictured driving around the street, on the sidelines of London Tech Week in London on June 8, 2026. (AFP)
A car from British autonomous driving technology company Wayve Technologies Ltd is pictured driving around the street, on the sidelines of London Tech Week in London on June 8, 2026. (AFP)

Bristling with sensors and electronic eyes, robotaxis are appearing on London's streets, slipping silently between red buses and black cabs, as companies battle to lead Europe's emerging autonomous vehicle market.

British start-up Wayve, in partnership with Uber, is racing to beat US rival Waymo, owned by Google-parent Alphabet.

China's Baidu is also to launch in the British capital, where winding streets, roadworks and pedestrian traffic bring unique challenges.

"London has 20 times the amount of road construction than San Francisco and 10 times the amount of vulnerable road users," said Kaity Fischer, head of business development at Wayve.

"We've had 2,000-year-old roads, certainly no perfect grid system," she told AFP ahead of a ride in the company's Ford Mustang Mach-E.

On the road, every pedestrian and intersection presents a test. The car responded smoothly though, braking where necessary.

Passengers tend to spend the first few minutes of the ride "marveling, videoing the steering wheel moving on its own, taking selfies", Fischer said.

Then "about three minutes in, they're doing the exact same thing that they do in any other Uber or ride hail -- they're looking at their phone", she added.

Britain stands ahead of the European Union in the race to getting driverless cars on the road, thanks to government efforts to speed up regulation.

The Labour government expects the autonomous vehicle sector to generate 38,000 jobs and £42 billion ($55 billion) by 2035.

- Backlash -

Londoners will be able to take their first commercial rides with Wayve this summer, with a human operator on board in the initial stages.

Waymo, already operating in 11 US cities using pre-mapped routes, could follow shortly after.

The sector's complexity means that companies competing in one city may collaborate in another, with one providing the technology and the other managing the fleet and commercial rollout.

Baidu, in partnership with ride-sharing firm Lyft, will be testing "in the coming weeks" ahead of launching in London later this year, said Jeremy Bird, Lyft's head of global growth.

At its launch, fares are likely to be "pretty similar" to traditional taxis, he told AFP.

Companies are under pressure to get the public on side, after a series of high-profile mishaps.

This year, a string of Baidu vehicles stalled in central China leaving passengers stranded.

Waymo had to recall nearly 4,000 cars after several incidents in which its robotaxis entered closed-off highway construction areas.

"Robotaxi players know they are just one bad accident away from getting serious pushback," McKinsey transport specialist Philipp Kampshoff told AFP.

"So you have to make sure safety is your absolute priority."

- 'Tourist attraction' -

Waymo product director Saswat Panigrahi has offered assurances that its cars record 13 times fewer serious accidents than human drivers.

The system's AI technology is "powerful enough" to detect tiny movements that indicate a pedestrian is about to walk across the road, he said at the South by Southwest tech festival in London.

But for Steve McNamara, head of London's taxi association, robotaxis are just "a solution to a problem that doesn't exist".

"They are pumping millions and millions of dollars into PR, into spin, into marketing, into convincing politicians, into convincing people that this is a great thing," McNamara told AFP.

London's taxi industry is still recovering from the rise of Uber, which reduced the number of its vehicles on the road to 14,800 in 2024 from 22,300 in 2009.

McNamara said robotaxis will ultimately become "a tourist attraction", adding that autonomous vehicles tend to wait until roads are completely clear before pulling out.

"There's parts of London where it would be sitting there until Christmas Day, if you're waiting for the road to be clear."

Technology

How SK Hynix’s Bet on a Niche Memory Chip Made It More Valuable Than Samsung

People stand near a logo of SK Hynix at the South Korean chipmaker's booth during the China International Supply Chain Expo (CISCE) in Beijing, China June 22, 2026. (Reuters)
People stand near a logo of SK Hynix at the South Korean chipmaker's booth during the China International Supply Chain Expo (CISCE) in Beijing, China June 22, 2026. (Reuters)
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How SK Hynix’s Bet on a Niche Memory Chip Made It More Valuable Than Samsung

People stand near a logo of SK Hynix at the South Korean chipmaker's booth during the China International Supply Chain Expo (CISCE) in Beijing, China June 22, 2026. (Reuters)
People stand near a logo of SK Hynix at the South Korean chipmaker's booth during the China International Supply Chain Expo (CISCE) in Beijing, China June 22, 2026. (Reuters)

SK Hynix's overtaking of Samsung Electronics to become South Korea's most valuable firm was the culmination of 14 years of bets that brought it skepticism and scorn but ultimately put it at the center of the global AI gold rush.

In 2012, conglomerate SK Group acquired Hynix Semiconductor in a deal that was considered financially irresponsible. Samsung, in contrast, was valued at more than 10 times SK Hynix and was the global leader in Dynamic Random-Access Memory (DRAM), a memory type that powers laptops and smartphones.

Eager to find an edge, SK Hynix bet on a different memory type that was considered niche: high-bandwidth memory chips (HBM), which could feed data fast but were not widely used by data center customers.

It released the world's first HBM product with Advanced Micro Devices in 2014, but stumbled with the chip's second generation, falling behind Samsung in the late 2010s. That prompted executives to debate whether to halt HBM development, two ex-executives said.

They eventually decided to double down, revamping their technology and investing heavily in new production capacity as they expected growing demand from Nvidia - back then known as a supplier of ‌3D graphic chips to ‌the computing and video game markets - said Shim Dae-yong, who led HBM development at SK Hynix at ‌the time.

That ⁠gamble, which involved ⁠an 880 billion won ($640 million) investment into a packaging facility in Icheon and other assets, initially appeared to backfire. That facility struggled with underutilization in 2019 as demand from Nvidia and cryptocurrency miners plummeted.

"It was a headache back in 2019," Shim said. "It was obsolete."

But it eventually paid off when OpenAI's ChatGPT release in 2022 ignited the artificial intelligence boom and global demand for HBM chips, which became critical to Nvidia's AI accelerators used in data centers to train and run AI models.

Today, SK Hynix is Nvidia's main HBM supplier.

"No one expected the HBM market would post such explosive growth," Shim said. "But we were ready in terms of performance and capacity."

Reuters spoke to three ex-SK Hynix executives including Shim and reviewed two books on the firm to help illustrate its early days and meteoric ⁠rise.

SK Hynix declined to comment on Reuters' questions about this story.

South Korea's stock market has been volatile of ‌late and SK Hynix's market cap fell below Samsung's on Wednesday.

CRISIS-RIDDEN

Founded in 1983 as Hyundai ‌Electronics, the firm went through crises and acquisitions before it became SK Hynix.

In 2001, it flirted with bankruptcy as chip prices plummeted before creditor banks, led by ‌state lenders, rescued it.

The creditors then tried to sell their stakes several times, including to Micron Technology in 2002, a decision that was ‌rejected by the company's board.

SK Group, then known for its telecoms and energy businesses, bought Hynix a decade later in a deal that prompted Standard & Poor's Ratings Services to assign SK Telecom a negative outlook, warning of the highly cyclical nature of the semiconductor industry and large capital expenditure requirements.

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won explained his thinking in a book published in January.

"What I really wanted to accomplish when we acquired Hynix was to transform it from a commodity memory producer into a mainstream ‌semiconductor company whose products are indispensable," Chey said.

Hyun Sun-yeop, a former SK Hynix HR executive, said its underdog status made it work harder.

"We believed that it would be impossible to overcome Samsung in commodity DRAM ⁠products," he said. "We were desperate to change ⁠the market dynamics. We needed a breakthrough."

Its focus on HBM later helped SK Hynix recover from the global memory industry's boom-and-bust cycle faster than Samsung. In 2023, a severe downturn battered memory prices, pushing SK Hynix to report an annual operating loss of 7.73 trillion won.

In 2024, the company posted a record operating profit and it briefly overtook Samsung as the world's top DRAM maker in 2025.

"No one would ever have imagined that SK Hynix would overtake Samsung," said Shin Jae-yong, a business administration professor at Seoul National University.

"It is almost impossible for a runner-up to catch up with the market leader in this capital-intensive industry, which requires massive investment. HBM was the powerful driver behind how they turned the tables."

Today, Samsung is playing catch-up. Its in-house foundry business supplies key components for HBM chips, while SK Hynix relies on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing to produce the so-called base die using less advanced technology.

SK Hynix's fortunes helped power South Korea's economy, its stock market and made its employees attractive marriage material. It is preparing to list shares in the US as soon as August to broaden its investor base, Reuters has reported.

It has also outpaced the expectations of its top bosses, with shares rallying more than 340% this year.

In 2024, Chey, the SK Group chair, said SK Hynix should seek a market capitalization of 1 quadrillion won and eventually raise that to 2 quadrillion won, according to a book, Super Momentum.

On Monday, it became South Korea's most valuable listed company, with a market value of nearly 2.1 quadrillion won.