The jury in the Oakland trial between Elon Musk and Sam Altman will begin deliberating Monday, following closing arguments Thursday.
According to bettors on Kalshi (which hopefully don’t include any jurors, but it’s hard to know these days), Altman and OpenAI will be the undisputed winners. Musk’s odds of winning dropped to nearly 20% Friday, from 58% at the outset of the trial.
Musk alleged that OpenAI, founded as a charity, was stolen from him. But that charity now has exponentially more resources than it did when the billionaire left. And that’s only because OpenAI opted to launch a for-profit company with shares worth tens of billions of dollars. In a kind of “split the baby” scenario, Musk would like for the company and the charity to go down in flames, rather than see them both continue.
Regardless of the outcome, the reality is that everybody lost. The trial unearthed embarrassing emails, texts, and diary entries of some of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley. It revealed the worst side of the leaders running some of our most important tech companies. As we said from the outset, what this case is really about is feeding the angry, anti-AI masses.
