WASHINGTON: Elon Musk, newly crowned the world&#39;s first trillionaire, faced renewed criticism Friday over anti-immigrant riots in Belfast after researchers said violent narratives he amplified on his platform X amassed millions of views. Clashes broke out in the Northern Irish capital after a brutal knife attack on Monday, with police charging a Sudanese national named Hadi Alodid with attempted murder. Musk amplified calls for protest across Britain from anti-immigration activist Tommy Robinson and wrote to his 240 million followers on X: &quot;Only by protesting REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY will there be any change.&quot; He also boosted anti-immigration posts and messages from Rupert Lowe, leader of the fringe hard-right party Restore Britain, extending his reach to millions of users on the platform. Researchers from the nonprofit tech watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) reported that the trio&#39;s posts about Belfast collectively garnered more than 115 million views across their accounts, with Musk accounting for 55 percent of the total. &quot;Musk&#39;s amplification has been instrumental,&quot; contributing 64 million views, CCDH said in a report. &quot;As the owner of X and its most followed user, Musk has unparalleled power to shape what people see online. With that power comes responsibility for the content and conduct his platform promotes,&quot; said Imran Ahmed, CCDH&#39;s founder and chief executive. &quot;Yet our research shows that he used the Belfast tragedy to amplify anti-migrant narratives to millions of users, prompting endless calls for violence. &quot;While communities dealt with the consequences of brutality and disorder, no individual played a bigger role in spreading this content on X than Musk himself,&quot; Ahmed added. X did not immediately respond to AFP&#39;s request for comment. Robinson -- whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon -- was formerly banned from X. His account was reinstated -- along with several other influencers accused of peddling misinformation or hate speech -- following Musk&#39;s 2022 acquisition of the platform, previously known as Twitter. Researchers say that Musk has also expanded Lowe&#39;s reach by amplifying his speeches in recent weeks and posting that only his party can &quot;save Britain.&quot; CCDH said it identified an &quot;explosion in calls for violence&quot; in the responses to the trio&#39;s posts about the Belfast unrest, with more than 3,900 comments advocating lynchings and other crimes against immigrants. Two-thirds of the calls for violence appeared in replies to Robinson&#39;s posts, it added. The research comes after Britain&#39;s media watchdog Ofcom warned of the increased risk of online platforms being used to &quot;stir up hatred, provoke violence and commit other offences under UK law.&quot; The findings coincided with a milestone for Musk, who became the world&#39;s first trillionaire on Friday after shares of his other company, SpaceX, soared following its Wall Street trading debut. The blockbuster initial public offering, the biggest in history, raised more than $75 billion.

Business

Elon Musk faces criticism over posts linked to anti-immigrant unrest in Belfast, as researchers say content he amplified on X generated millions of views and fueled calls for violence online.

Newly minted trillionaire Musk under fire over Belfast riots

NEW YORK: Elon Musk became the world&#39;s first trillionaire Friday following a surge in SpaceX shares in its Wall Street trading debut, according to US media. Shares of the tech and artificial intelligence enterprise vaulted more than 21 percent in early trading, lifting Musk&#39;s estimated wealth to above $1 trillion, according to Bloomberg and CNBC. Musk&#39;s fortune is heavily composed of equity or &quot;paper&quot; holdings, rather than cash.

Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire Friday following a surge in SpaceX shares in its Wall Street trading debut

Elon Musk world's first trillionaire after SpaceX debut: Bloomberg

LONDON: Wall Street opened mixed on Friday, when SpaceX was set to begin trading following world&#39;s largest initial public offering, while oil prices slid on hopes of an agreement to end the Middle East war. SpaceX priced more than 555 million shares at $135 each in a filing with the US markets regulator on Thursday, placing the company in the top 10 of Wall Street&#39;s biggest firms with a valuation of just under $1.8 trillion - ahead of Tesla, Facebook-owner Meta and Walmart. Briefing.com analyst Patrick O&#39;Hare said before markets opened that the SpaceX shares were expected to soar from the IPO price when they begin trading later in the morning, because the offer was heavily oversubscribed. &quot;But just how high it goes is the great unknown, along with how the performance of the stock might direct things for the broader market,&quot; he said. The Nasdaq, on which SpaceX shares are listed, dipped at the start of trading, while the Dow and S&amp;P 500 edged higher. The drop in oil prices to under $90 per barrel also helped boost sentiment in equities markets. US President Donald Trump claimed on Thursday an agreement to end the Middle East war could be signed in days and cancelled threatened strikes, although Iran&#39;s position remained unclear. Iran&#39;s foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said Tehran &quot;had not reached a final conclusion on the agreement&quot;. The country&#39;s state media said that under a draft agreement with the United States, Tehran would not give up control over the strategic Strait of Hormuz. Europe&#39;s main markets gained more than one percent in afternoon trading, following big gains in Asia. &quot;Investors were in a buoyant mood as hopes of a peace deal between the US and Iran were revived, having seemingly dropped off the table earlier in the week,&quot; said&nbsp;Dan Coatsworth, head of markets at AJ Bell. &quot;Whether momentum can be sustained depends on positive noises about a resolution translating into something more solid in the coming days,&quot; he added. The international benchmark Brent crude was down more than two percent at around $88 a barrel. &quot;Oil markets may be breathing a little easie, but the path back to smoother flows could take us into the latter part of the year,&quot; said Matt Britzman, senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown. &quot;Even if a deal is reached, getting supply back to normal will not be as simple as flicking a switch, with mines in the Strait of Hormuz to clear, idled production fields to restart and damaged energy infrastructure to repair,&quot; he said. In Asia, Japan&#39;s Nikkei closed up almost three percent on Friday,&nbsp;while Seoul&#39;s chip-heavy Kospi gave back earlier gains to end the day more than four percent higher. The Hang Seng and Shanghai also rallied. Key figures around 1330 GMTBrent North Sea Crude: DOWN&nbsp;2.4 percent at $88.18 a barrel West Texas Intermediate: DOWN 2.8 percent at $85.26 a barrel New York - Dow: UP 0.7&nbsp;percent at 51,180.18 points New York - S&amp;P 500: UP 0.2&nbsp;percent at 7,405.84 New York - Nasdaq Composite: DOWN 0.2&nbsp;percent at&nbsp;24,524.64 London - FTSE 100: UP 1.2 percent at 10,426.86 Paris - CAC 40: UP 1.7 percent at 8,339.10 Frankfurt - DAX: UP 1.3 percent at 24,524.64 Tokyo - Nikkei 225: UP 2.8 percent at 66,020.04 (close) Hong Kong - Hang Seng Index: UP 1.9 percent at 24,718.10 (close) Shanghai - Composite: UP 1.1 percent at 4,031.51 (close) Euro/dollar: DOWN&nbsp;at $1.1578 from $1.1579 on Thursday Pound/dollar: DOWN at $1.3414 from $1.3418 Dollar/yen: UP at 160.21 yen from 159.78 yen Euro/pound: UP at 86.32 pence from 86.29 pence

Wall Street opened mixed on Friday, when SpaceX was set to begin trading following world's largest initial public offering, while oil prices slid on hopes of an agreement to end the Middle East war

Wall Street wobbles as SpaceX shares launch, oil slides on Mideast deal hopes

NEW YORK: Elon Musk&#39;s SpaceX on Thursday confirmed it will begin trading on the Nasdaq exchange Friday in the biggest initial public offering in history, a blockbuster market debut that could propel the entrepreneur to trillionaire status. In a filing with the US markets regulator, the company priced more than 555 million shares at $135 each, placing SpaceX among Wall Street&#39;s most elite companies with a valuation of just under $1.8 trillion. The offering will raise a record $75 billion, easily outranking Saudi Aramco&#39;s $29.4 billion debut in 2019, until now the biggest ever. Underwriters hold an option to buy nearly 83 million additional shares, which would push the total above $86 billion if exercised in full. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America led a syndicate of more than 20 banks on the deal. The space and rocket company, co-founded by Musk in 2002, will trade under the ticker symbol &quot;SPCX,&quot; with a parallel listing on Nasdaq Texas. All eyes will be on how Wall Street absorbs the offering, which could send tremors across global markets. As is traditional for high-profile debuts, executives are expected to ring the opening bell on Friday to mark the start of the session -- in this case at New York&#39;s Times Square, home of the Nasdaq. SpaceX will be the first out of the gates among the tech and AI giants eyeing public markets, with OpenAI and Anthropic expected to follow -- both having recently filed with regulators for their own market debuts. The IPO is Musk&#39;s biggest financial gamble yet, with his xAI company and the X social media platform (formerly Twitter) also included in the offering after the multi-billionaire folded them into the company earlier this year. The offering was more than four times oversubscribed by major banks and financial institutions, according to Bloomberg, with interest from everyday investors reported to also be high. More than 20 percent of the shares will be reserved for these retail investors, a far greater proportion than is typically allocated in IPOs, giving Musk&#39;s legions of fans a chance to buy a slice of the company. Data centers in spaceThe success of the IPO rests squarely on investors&#39; faith in Musk as a visionary entrepreneur. The tech multi-billionaire will serve as chief executive, chief technology officer and board chairman of the newly traded company. The IPO is expected to mint thousands of new millionaires and many billionaires, with former and current employees -- and a long list of investors -- from the company&#39;s near quarter-century history looking to cash in. The financials of the company are giving some on Wall Street pause, as the valuation largely depends on Musk delivering on promises worthy of science fiction, including putting data centers in space as well as people on Mars using as yet unproven technology. While the company is growing fast -- revenue hit $18.7 billion in 2025 -- it is also losing money, producing a net loss of $4.9 billion. In an extraordinary prediction, SpaceX&#39;s filing claims it can pull in over $28.5 trillion in revenue from its various markets. Musk&#39;s fortune on Thursday stood at $782 billion according to the Forbes list of the world&#39;s richest people, nearing three times the wealth of number two, Google co-founder Larry Page. A successful IPO could make him the first trillionaire in history on Friday.

Artificial Intelligence

SpaceX confirms a record $75 billion IPO, valuing the company at nearly $1.8 trillion, as investors back Elon Musk’s space, AI and long-term technology ambitions worldwide for growth.

SpaceX to make historic IPO that could make Musk a trillionaire

LONDON: UK leader Keir Starmer accused US tech tycoon Elon Musk on Thursday of &quot;trying to whip up division&quot; in Britain after anger over the police handling of the murder of a student. The case of 18-year-old Henry Nowak, who was put in handcuffs by police as he lay mortally wounded after being stabbed by Vickrum Digwa, 23, in the southern city of Southampton in December, has become highly politicized in the UK. Digwa lied and told the police he himself was the victim and that Nowak had racially insulted him. Far-right figures have seized on the murder as an example that police forces in Britain treat white people and ethnic minorities differently -- an allegation Starmer&#39;s Labour government and police chiefs vehemently deny. Musk, the billionaire owner of X, has posted numerous times on the platform about the police response to the stabbing. In one, he asked whether people knew that &quot;official police policy requires them to be racist against Whites?&quot; Musk has offered to fund a private prosecution against the police over its handling of the murder, and insulted the Hampshire Police force. &quot;We need to also assert who we are as a country, because Musk, again, has been interfering in our politics in the last few days, trying to whip up division. That is not who we are in Britain,&quot; Starmer told reporters. &quot;In Britain, we are reasonable, tolerant people.&nbsp;When we have a terrible case like Henry&#39;s ... we react calmly, as his family have done,&quot; the prime minister added, referring to pleas from Nowak&#39;s father that his son&#39;s murder should not be used &quot;to create further division, hatred or tension.&quot; Digwa was jailed for at least 21 years on Monday for stabbing Nowak to death using a knife with a 21-centimeter (eight-inch) blade following an altercation about a mobile phone. Starmer has said there was &quot;no justification&quot; for violence at a Southampton protest on Tuesday night attended by far-right agitators, which saw demonstrators throw bricks, flares and chairs at police officers. One person has been charged with assault, and another with violent disorder. &#39;Lies and misinformation&#39;&nbsp;The prime minister said it was &quot;unforgivable&quot; that hard-right firebrand Nigel Farage, whose Reform UK party leads opinion polls, had called for people to respond to the murder with &quot;pure cold rage.&quot; Farage, who has been accused of stoking racial tensions with his remarks, has defended his comments. Starmer has called the bodycam footage of Nowak&#39;s death, during which he can repeatedly be heard telling officers he could not breathe, as &quot;harrowing.&quot; He said &quot;there are serious questions that need to be answered&quot; about the police response. The Independent Office for Police Conduct watchdog is investigating and is expected to report back within the next three months. Musk has long been an outspoken critic of Starmer, a former chief state prosecutor before entering politics. The pair clashed last year over a decades-long &quot;grooming gangs&quot; sexual abuse scandal. Then, the prime minister accused the world&#39;s richest man of &quot;spreading lies and misinformation.&quot;

British police chiefs are reviewing anti-racism guidance following outrage over the treatment of a white student, who was handcuffed as he lay dying after being stabbed by a Sikh man, officials said June 3. (Photo: AFP)

United Kingdom

Keir Starmer accuses Elon Musk of stoking divisions in Britain by interfering in political debate surrounding a controversial murder case.

UK PM says Elon Musk 'trying to whip up division' over student's murder 

SOUTHAMPTON: Body camera footage of a dying student who was handcuffed by British police after being stabbed by a Sikh man and falsely accused of racially abusing his murderer sparked outrage Tuesday. Eighteen-year-old Henry Nowak is heard repeatedly telling police, &quot;I can&#39;t breathe,&quot; in the footage captured as he lay mortally wounded in December after a night out with his football team members. A judge on Monday jailed his killer, 23-year-old Sikh Vickrum Digwa, for at least 21 years for stabbing Nowak to death with a ceremonial knife with a 21cm blade. When police arrived at the scene in the south coast city of Southampton, Digwa lied to officers, telling them Nowak had racially insulted him and that he was the victim. The footage, which was played during Digwa&#39;s trial, shows police accepting the aggressor&#39;s accusation, and rather than helping Nowak, initially placed him in handcuffs despite his pleas that he had been stabbed and could not breathe. One officer can be heard asking Nowak: &quot;You&#39;ve been stabbed, whereabouts?&quot; before adding: &quot;Don&#39;t think you have, mate.&quot; Moments later, the young student collapsed and became unconscious. Speaking after Digwa was sentenced at Southampton Crown Court, Nowak&#39;s father, Mark, described the police treatment of his son as &quot;shocking.&quot; He called Nowak&#39;s treatment &quot;inhumane and degrading ... his murderer, however, was afforded decency. He was believed.&quot; The family gave permission for the police to release the bodycam footage. Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned on X on Monday&nbsp;the &quot;awful, shocking case,&quot; saying it was right the independent police complaints watchdog was investigating officers&#39; &quot;response to (Nowak&#39;s) senseless murder.&quot; Main opposition Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch and far-right Reform UK leader Nigel Farage called for changes to police diversity policies. Farage said there needed to be an end to &quot;anti-white prejudice&quot; and recognition that &quot;white lives matter.&quot; &lsquo;Two-tier culture&rsquo; He said Nowak&#39;s words echoed the 2020 case of George Floyd, a black killed by police in the United States. &quot;I can&#39;t breathe. Familiar words. Remember career criminal George Floyd, who died in appalling circumstances in Midwest America,&quot; Farage said. At the time, Keir Starmer was taking the knee. Black Lives Matter exploded all over the country. Churchill&#39;s statue was defaced,&quot; Farage said. But after Nowak&#39;s death, there has been &quot;absolute silence, proof ... we&#39;re living in a two-tier culture in this country where the rights and privileges of white people matter less than those of ethnic minorities.&quot; Change was needed, Farage said, &quot;if our society is not to be ripped apart&quot; amid distrust between communities, and concern over policing and institutions. Badenoch accused Farage of &quot;deepening divisions&quot; with his comments. But she also took aim at so-called &quot;two-tier policing&quot; in which police allegedly deal with ethnic minorities more leniently. Badenoch, whose party has lost support on the right to Reform UK, called for citizens to be treated equally by police regardless of ethnicity. &quot;No two-tier policing, no believing that racism only happens to ethnic minorities. It happens to everyone,&quot; she told Good Morning Britain television. &quot;And the police need to be trained like that, not with the terrible anti-racism training, which is just reverse racism and reverse discrimination,&quot; she said. American tech tycoon Elon Musk posted on X an offer to fund a private prosecution against the police over their handling of the murder. Digwa was due in court again on Tuesday with his brother, Gurpreet Digwa, 27, and his father, Moga Singh, 52, on weapons offenses. All three face charges of possession of offensive weapons, including a flick knife, an extendable baton, knuckledusters, a machete, swords and kusaris. Digwa&#39;s family apologized to Nowak&#39;s family for the killing.&nbsp; The convicted killer&#39;s mother, Kiran Kaur, 53, will be sentenced on July 17 for assisting an offender by taking the knife back to the family home.

Demonstrators gather around Kingsway to march during 'Unite the Kingdom' organized at the call of far-right activist Tommy Robinson in London, United Kingdom on May 16, 2026. (AFP)

Europe

18 year-old Henry Nowak is heard repeatedly telling police "I can't breathe" in the footage captured as he lay mortally wounded in December after a night out with his football team members.

'I can't breathe': Outrage after UK police handcuff dying student

SOUTH PADRE ISLAND: SpaceX&#39;s Starship spacecraft splashed down into the Indian ocean Friday after the company performed a test flight of the latest version of the enormous rocket. The voyage was not without a few glitches, but SpaceX employees shown on a livestream roared in delight following the trial flight that comes as the firm prepares a potentially record initial public offering. The mammoth rocket blasted off into space at just after 5:30 pm local time (2230 GMT). The company did not intend to recover either the booster or the upper stage, and the final splashdown was fiery but controlled, as planned. &quot;Splashdown confirmed! Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on the twelfth flight test of Starship!&quot; the company wrote on X. The third-generation Starship spacecraft carried out a maneuver that saw it flip upright and reignite its engines for control, despite one being out of commission. It also deployed its 22 mock satellites, including two that attempted to photograph the spacecraft&#39;s heat shield for analysis. The vehicle had coasted through space but was not in exactly the correct orbit after one of its engines malfunctioned during an initial burn. &quot;I wouldn&#39;t call it nominal orbital insertion,&quot; company spokesperson Dan Huot said, adding however that it was &quot;within bounds&quot; of a previously analyzed trajectory. After the Super Heavy booster separated from the upper stage as expected, Huot said on the livestream that the booster failed to complete its so-called boost-back burn. The booster fell swiftly back to Earth, uncontrolled, into the Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX wasn&#39;t planning to recapture the booster anyway, but was still hoping for a precision return. NASA administrator onsite Friday&#39;s flight followed an aborted trial one day prior. The countdown clock stopped and started until it was determined that the last-minute red flags could not be addressed in time. Musk quickly posted on X that &quot;the hydraulic pin holding the tower arm in place did not retract.&quot; SpaceX said that issue was corrected overnight. The company is facing extra scrutiny after SpaceX filed earlier this week with US financial regulators to go public, likely in June, in what is expected to become a record IPO. Friday marks Starship&#39;s 12th flight overall, but the first in seven months. The latest design is bigger than its predecessor, standing at just over 124 meters when fully stacked. There&#39;s a lot riding on SpaceX&#39;s progress: the company is under contract with NASA to produce a modified version of Starship to serve as a lunar landing system. The US space agency&#39;s Artemis program aims to return humans to the Moon, as China forges ahead with a rival effort that&#39;s targeting 2030 for its first crewed mission. Ahead of launch, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman appeared during the pre-launch SpaceX program and said &quot;we&#39;re looking forward to seeing this fly, because hopefully at some point in the not-too-distant future we&#39;re going to join up in Earth orbit.&quot; Both SpaceX and rival Blue Origin, the Jeff Bezos-owned firm also vying to develop a lunar lander, have realigned their strategies to prioritize projects related to Moon missions. NASA is aiming to test an in-orbit rendezvous between its spacecraft and one or two lunar landers in 2027 and carry out a crewed lunar landing before the end of 2028. But a lot needs to happen before then &ndash; and industry experts have voiced repeated skepticism that SpaceX and Blue Origin can achieve benchmarks in time.

Americas

SpaceX’s Starship completes its 12th test flight with a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean after minor malfunctions, as the company advances its lunar and commercial space ambitions.

SpaceX's enormous Starship splashes down after test flight

OAKLAND: A federal jury ruled Monday that Elon Musk waited too long to sue OpenAI and its co-founders, delivering a decisive victory to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and ending one of Silicon Valley&#39;s most closely watched courtroom battles. The jury in Oakland federal court found that Musk&#39;s claims against Altman, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, The OpenAI Foundation and Microsoft were barred by relevant statutes of limitations, rejecting the billionaire&#39;s core arguments. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who had asked the jury to advise her on the matter, accepted and confirmed the verdict. The three-week trial saw a parade of tech titans take the stand, with Musk arguing that OpenAI&#39;s pivot to a profit-driven business betrayed its original nonprofit mandate. The outcome spares OpenAI from a potentially existential legal threat. Had Musk prevailed, he was seeking to force the company to revert to its nonprofit structure -- a move that would have derailed its planned IPO and unwound ties to major investors including Microsoft, Amazon and SoftBank, who have poured billions into the company amid the global AI race. Musk, the world&#39;s richest person, had sued OpenAI over its transformation from a scrappy nonprofit into the $850 billion juggernaut behind ChatGPT, claiming Altman and Brockman improperly used a $38 million donation he had intended to sustain OpenAI as a research lab devoted to developing AI for the benefit of humanity. The jury first had to resolve a threshold issue: whether Musk, who filed suit in 2024 -- four years after his last contribution -- had done so within the statutory time limit. It found he had not, ending the case before jurors could weigh the underlying merits. The judge had ruled ahead of deliberations that the jury&#39;s verdict on the statute of limitations would be advisory, but said she would likely follow its recommendation. Had the case proceeded, jurors -- and ultimately the judge -- would have determined whether OpenAI&#39;s co-founders misappropriated Musk&#39;s donations and broke promises to him in order to pursue a commercial path and enrich themselves. Dueling billionairesClosing arguments had centered heavily on Altman&#39;s integrity and behind-the-scenes maneuvering that rankled colleagues. Musk attorney Steven Molo attacked Altman&#39;s credibility, invoking OpenAI&#39;s founding vision. &quot;A non-profit devoted to the safe development of artificial intelligence, open-sourced as practical, for the benefit of humanity. You know, we&#39;re supposed to buy that,&quot; Molo said Thursday. OpenAI attorney Sarah Eddy countered with an attack on Musk himself, pointing to testimony from Shivon Zilis -- a business associate of Musk with whom he has four children -- who had served as an intermediary between the tech executives. &quot;Even the people who work for him, even the mother of his children, can&#39;t back his story,&quot; Eddy said. As Judge Gonzalez Rogers noted during the trial, the case had in many ways come down to a simple question: who to believe among the bickering billionaires. Musk left OpenAI in 2018 and has since pursued AI projects through his rocket company SpaceX, while his AI startup xAI has struggled to gain traction against OpenAI and Anthropic, another prominent California-based company. Altman, who was fired unexpectedly by OpenAI&#39;s board in November 2023 for a lack of candor before being reinstated under pressure from employees, emerged from the trial with allegations of manipulation and a toxic work culture largely unresolved by the verdict. Microsoft, OpenAI&#39;s largest private backer with $13 billion committed, was also spared. Musk&#39;s accusation that the Windows-making giant was liable for aiding and abetting the alleged breach of charitable trust fell away once the underlying case was ruled invalid.

US jury ruled Elon Musk sued OpenAI too late, ending his challenge against Sam Altman, Microsoft and OpenAI’s for-profit shift, preserving the company’s structure, investor ties and planned public offering.

Musk loses blockbuster OpenAI suit as jury says too late

OAKLAND: Elon Musk was obsessed with trying to control OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company&#39;s CEO Sam Altman said Tuesday at a blockbuster trial pitting some of the world&#39;s wealthiest tech titans against each other. Altman is the latest in a parade of Silicon Valley megastars to take the stand in the case brought by Musk over OpenAI&#39;s pivot away from scrappy non-profit into the $850 billion juggernaut behind ChatGPT. Musk -- the richest person on the planet -- claims Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman improperly used a $38 million injection he had hoped would sustain OpenAI as a research lab, developing the technology for the good of humanity. &quot;It does not fit with my conception of the words &#39;stealing a charity&#39; to look at what has actually happened here,&quot; Altman told the court in Oakland, California. OpenAI was founded as a non-profit in 2015, but established a for-profit subsidiary in 2019 as the AI race heated up. Altman and others insist this was necessary to raise the vast sums of money from investors, including Microsoft, required to compete in a costly and difficult field. Musk&#39;s legal case demands that OpenAI revert to non-profit status, a move that would impact its position in the global artificial intelligence race against Anthropic, Google and China&#39;s Deepseek. OpenAI counters that Musk -- who is now also an AI competitor with his xAI -- is motivated by petty revenge, having failed to seize majority control of the commercial entity. The court has heard how, in 2017, the company&#39;s co-founders discussed the creation of the subsidiary with Musk. Altman said Tuesday that the Tesla boss demanded a huge controlling stake. &quot;An early number that Mr Musk threw out was that he should have 90% of the equity to start,&quot; he told the jury. &quot;It then softened, but it always was a majority.&quot; &quot;The fact that Mr Musk was unwilling to commit in writing to something contractual where he would not have long-term control made me very uncomfortable,&quot; said Altman. He noted OpenAI had been founded with the belief that no one person should control artificial general intelligence (AGI), the hypothetical level at which AI is smarter than humans. When Altman and Brockman thwarted Musk&#39;s attempts to dominate the company, the mercurial businessman walked away entirely, telling them the venture would fail without him. &quot;The thing that burned into my memory is when he told us we had a zero percent -- not one percent -- chance of success,&quot; Altman told the hearing. &#39;I&#39;m a truthful person&#39; Musk&#39;s lawyers hit back, sparring with Altman over claims he is deceitful. &quot;Are you completely trustworthy?&quot; Attorney Steven Molo asked. &quot;Do you always tell the truth?&quot; &quot;I believe I&#39;m a truthful person,&quot; a tense Altman replied. &quot;It wasn&#39;t my question, sir,&quot; snapped Molo. Altman was abruptly ousted as head of OpenAI in Nov. 2023, accused of mendacity by his own board of directors. He was reinstated five days later after a company revolt, but has struggled to shrug off a reputation for dishonesty in Silicon Valley. Musk&#39;s case has highlighted the mind-boggling sums of cash washing around AI companies as they forge ahead with a technology that is changing the way we live and work. That includes the $30 billion stake that Altman&#39;s co-founder Greg Brockman was revealed to have in the company. On Monday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified that he was &quot;very proud&quot; of his firm&#39;s canny investment in the commercial venture, which has seen an initial $13 billion become worth more than ten times that amount in just a few years. Altman&#39;s testimony is expected to continue into Wednesday. An advisory jury is expected to reach a verdict on any actual wrongdoing by the week of May 18. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will then make the final ruling on both liability and remedies after hearing the jury&#39;s opinion. She has indicated she will likely follow their advice.

Musk -- the richest person on the planet -- claims Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman improperly used a $38 million injection he had hoped would sustain OpenAI as a research lab, developing the technology for the good of humanity.

Musk 'wanted 90%' of OpenAI, Altman tells tech titan trial

WASHINGTON: Top US executives, including Tesla&#39;s Elon Musk and Apple&#39;s Tim Cook, will accompany US President Donald Trump on his visit to China this week, a White House official said Monday. Beijing has said it is ready to work with the United States in pursuit of &quot;more stability&quot; and confirmed that Trump will visit, the first US president to do so since 2017. His trip runs from Wednesday to Friday. Washington and Beijing have been at loggerheads over key issues ranging from trade tariffs to the Iran war to Taiwan, which China claims as part of its territory. While in Beijing, Trump will hold talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, with the countries&#39; myriad trade and economic issues on the table. Trump and Xi agreed in October to a one-year truce in a blistering trade war that saw tariffs on many goods exceed 100 percent. The US president has been pressuring companies to build manufacturing facilities in the United States, a bid to both reduce imports and increase domestic economic activity. Many top tech companies&#39; supply chains, however, heavily involve China, making them particularly exposed to bilateral trade tensions. The United States has also sought to block China from accessing the highest-end artificial intelligence chips from US companies. According to a list shared by a White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, Musk and Cook will be accompanied by 15 other chief executive officers. They include the chiefs of Boeing, GE Aerospace, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Mastercard and Visa. Among tech companies, top executives from Cisco, Meta, Micron and Qualcomm will be on the trip, the official said. Musk, the richest person in the world, heavily backed Trump on the campaign trail for his second term as US president, contributing more than $280 million. The two had a public falling out in July last year, but appear to have since reconciled, with Musk reappearing in White House circles.

China

Top US executives, including Elon Musk and Tim Cook, will accompany President Donald Trump on his China visit this week, where talks with Xi Jinping are expected to focus on trade, technology and regional tensions.

Articles tagged with "Elon Musk"