The Story So Far: Ukraine, engaged in a war with Russia for more than four years, on Wednesday (October 14, 2026) reported network connectivity issues, affecting defence infrastructure and weapons system, arising after the U.S.-based Starlink system “slowed down”. Ukrainian officials and analysts have alleged intentional disruption of services of the system owned by Elon Musk and have also accused the Donald Trump administration of holding back intelligence and leaving the country in the dark against Russian advances. The reported network disruption comes days after the U.S. President announced a deal to procure diesel from Russia and declared an “energy ceasefire” between Moscow and Kiev, saying that the warring parties have agreed to stop attacking energy facilities. 

What are the issues reported with Starlink?  

The low-earth orbit satellite system by SpaceX, a dream project of the billionaire Mr. Musk, provides Internet connectivity to more than 160 countries and claims to be able to reach remote areas with far more reliability than other network systems. Following Russia’s invasion in 2022, Mr. Musk has deployed Starlink satellites over Ukraine and have sent over thousands of receivers to enable uninterrupted communications for military personnel, even in the frontlines, government officials, and civilians.

Ukraine also have access to Starshield, a modified and secure Starlink network developed for the Pentagon which is tailored for military operations. While Mr. Musk has claimed that the two are separate entities, both Starlink and Starshield use the same base technology. The Pentagon funds the use of Starshield in Ukraine under a classified contract managed by the U.S. Department of Defence.   

Ukrainian troops have used Starlink and Starshield to communicate as well and control crucial defence and offence assets during the war, especially in drones and missile-defence systems. The systems can provide livestreams from the front lines. Enable remote control of drones and other weapons and help track assets. However, all these facilities took a hit last day when assets reported bad connection or no connection while moving faster than 160 kilometre per hour.  

The New York Times reported messages among military units on Wednesday (October 14, 2026) warning soldiers operating vehicles or drones about the slowdown of Starlink services. It also reported Ukrainian soldiers as saying that the restrictions affected weaponised drones targeting Russian logistical routes and occupied territories.  

Serhiy Beskrestnov, a Ukraininan weapons expert and an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in a social media post that defence forces did not receive any warnings on the restriction and the move has led to the “failure of several missions”.  He said that the slowdown affected long-barrage missions and frontline logistics but added that the bigger problem was the effects of defence systems.

Russia’s jet-powered attacking drones, Shaheds, move at speeds close to 200 kilometre per hour and the slowdown of Starlink has made it impossible for Ukrainian missiles to catch up to it.  The restrictions effectively tied Ukraine’s hands while Russia, from where Mr. Musk had earlier withdrawn Starlink coverage, was left free to go on with its war. The restrictions “obviously cannot be a coinccidence and are related to the current political scenario,” the Zelenskyy adviser said in his post.  

Why is the U.S. being accused of the disruption?  

While U.S. has been a Ukraine ally since the beginning of the invasion, the highly unpredictable President Trump has gone wayward in his policies on wars. Weeks after signing into law an Act enabling 100% tariffs on top buyers of Russian oil to cut funding for Moscow, Mr. Trump last week announced getting diesel from Russia, a move aimed at satisfying his vote base ahead of the November midterms. The President also announced the “energy ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine. 

However, Mr. Zelenskyy remains skeptic over this truce as he accuses Russia of not abiding by it and continuing to attack Ukrainian powerplants. Analysts have pointed out that Mr. Trumps ceasefire only covered oil refineries, of which none in Ukraine are currently operational. This makes Mr. Trump’s truce an attempt to keep his diesel flow uninterrupted while Russia moves on with its tactics of cutting of energy for Ukrainians ahead of the winter.  Mr. Zelenskyy, in a social media post, said the strikes were “entirely deliberate”, adding that “Russia has never before shown such ostentatious disrespect” to the U.S. 

Adding to the allegations of U.S. moving to Russia’s side came the reported shutdown of intelligence sharing between Washington and Kiev, as military personnel in the frontline said they were unaware of a barrage of ballistic missiles from Russia on Tuesday (October 13, 2026) night. Mr. Zelenskyy said dozens of ballistic missiles were fired at Ukraine on Tuesday (October 13, 2026) night, one of the largest such attack since the war began, cutting off power for more than 6 lakh people.  

While Mr. Trump has denied Ukraine’s charges on stopping intelligence sharing, Axios reported that U.S. envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff had threatened Ukraine of the same if Washington’s proposals were not accepted. A U.S. official denied the threat and said that the envoys merely conveyed that the “U.S. was a strong partner providing munitions and intelligence” and that Ukraine therefore “should not take actions that hurt Americans”.    

Mr. Musk late on Wednesday (October 14, 2026) night responded to Starlink issue, and appeared to pass the blame to the administration, strengthening Ukraine’s charges, while replying to a post on X by former Ukrainian Defence Minister Mykhailo Federov, in which he claimed that Starlink connections appeared to be back to normal in the country.  Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the U.S. government, Mr. Musk said, adding that any limits on speed or usage are decided by the U.S. military and ultimately the President. He also sought to separate Starshield from Starlink, saying that the latter was a commercial service for civilian use or defensive activities and cannot be engaged for offensive purposes.  

Published – October 15, 2026 11:23 am IST

Elon Musk on Saturday (October 10, 2026) stepped up his attack against industrialist Mukesh Ambani, sharing screenshots of media reports alleging that a Reliance-funded firm helped boost BJP campaigns on social media and that a Reliance-linked company made large political donations to the ruling party.

The latest post by Mr. Musk on X featured an Al Jazeera report from 2022 headlined “How a Reliance-funded firm boosts BJP’s campaigns on Facebook” and an archived Indian Express report from 2024 on Qwik Supply, which reported that the Reliance-linked firm donated ₹385 crore to the BJP and ₹25 crore to the Shiv Sena through electoral bonds.

The latest post comes amid Mr. Musk’s scathing criticism of Mukesh Ambani over a persistent delay in the launch of Starlink satellite broadband services in India.

Reliance has not publicly responded to Mr. Musk’s allegations, while the government has maintained that the country’s authorisation framework for telecom and satellite services is “fair and non-discriminatory” and that any suggestion that it was being applied selectively was “baseless and misconceived.”

A few hours before he made the post, Mr. Musk on X addressed Mukesh Ambani as “Prime Minister Ambani” and accused him of protecting a monopoly. Mr. Musk wondered if Mr. Ambani would consider allowing his satellite internet service to compete with his entity in the country.

On Friday (October 9, 2026), Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia asserted that India does not permit monopolies in any sector, and that despite the buzz around one particular company, three players have received satcom licences and can start operations after meeting the security requirements and milestones.

Mr. Musk has alleged that powerful business interests are seeking to block his service to preserve their dominance in the Indian market. He said his Starlink was being blocked by certain oligarchs seeking to “maintain their monopolistic chokehold on the Indian people.”

“Dear Prime Minister Ambani, Please accept my humble apologies for not realising that you are the real boss of India. Naturally, you would prefer to maintain your monopolistic exploitation of the great people of India, but would you nonetheless consider allowing Starlink to compete?” he wrote.

Mr. Musk also said many areas of India have no internet access, and the absence denies children education and small businesses the opportunity to sell their goods to a global market.

Starlink would change their lives for the better, the technocrat asserted.

Within minutes of that post late Friday evening (October 9, 2026), Mr. Musk wrote another, saying Starlink has proven to be essential in saving lives during natural disasters throughout the world, when all other communication systems failed. “So you would also be helping save men, women and children throughout India,” he added.

Mr. Scindia has said India doesn’t allow monopoly in any sector.

“Let me set the record straight. For us, the Department of Telecommunications, we are technology-agnostic… Our job is to be able to provide the bouquet of services to every single customer. It is for the customer to choose in a free market which service he or she prefers, and within that service bouquet, which company’s service he or she prefers,” the Union minister said at a briefing at the India Mobile Congress here.

Mr. Scindia said three entities – Mr. Musk’s Starlink, Reliance Jio’s satellite venture Jio Satcom, Bharti-backed Eutelsat OneWeb – have already secured licences, while Amazon’s Project Kuiper has expressed interest and will need to follow the established procedure.

While there is a lot of conversation about one particular company, three have got satcom licences, he said.

“We are very clear on our stand. There are three parties that have got a licence; as and when the government decides the charge system on the revenue basis, that spectrum will be assigned to them, and as and when they individually fulfil the security conditions, they can start operations,” the minister said.

TRAI and the telecom department are close to a final decision on pricing regime for satcom spectrum, Mr. Scindia added.

The BJP leader also hit out at the Congress in the backdrop of Rahul Gandhi and Mr. Musk’s exchange on X. “As far as the Congress is concerned… I don’t think they themselves know whether they’re going left or right,” the former member of the party said.

He said the Congress initially had a problem with “a certain person getting a licence” and pointed out that “now they have a problem, and they’ve allied with that person in terms of why he’s not getting a licence.”

“So I don’t know whether they have clarity on where they’re going, but that is the case with the Congress, which is to be expected,” Mr. Scindia said.

Mr. Musk’s allegations came as India Mobile Congress (IMC) – a grand annual telecom event – unfolded in Delhi.

“Starlink is licensed in over 165 countries and has spent five years complying with every single law and requirement of the government of India, so why still no license?” Mr. Musk wrote in a post on X earlier.

Published – October 10, 2026 10:26 am IST

Elon Musk on Friday (October 9, 2026) escalated his public spat over Starlink’s entry into India, sarcastically addressing industrialist Mukesh Ambani as “Prime Minister Ambani” and accusing him of seeking to protect a monopoly, while asking if he would consider allowing the satellite internet service to compete in the country.

Mr. Musk’s latest salvo on X came just hours after Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia asserted that India does not permit monopolies in any sector, and that despite the buzz around one “particular” company, three players have received satcom licences and can start operations after individually meeting the security requirements and milestones.

The post by Mr. Musk now marks a sharp escalation in the Starlink satcom offering row, which saw the U.S. trillionaire recently alleging that powerful business interests are seeking to block his service to preserve their dominance in the Indian market.

In a post on Thursday (October 8, 2026), Mr. Musk had asked if “Ambani is the real boss of India”.

On Friday (October 9, 2026) evening, Mr. Musk upped the ante with a fresh post.

“Dear Prime Minister Ambani, Please accept my humble apologies for not realising that you are the real boss of India. Naturally, you would prefer to maintain your monopolistic exploitation of the great people of India, but would you nonetheless consider allowing Starlink to compete?” he wrote.

Mr. Musk also said that there are many areas of India, as there are in all countries, with no internet access, which denies children the opportunity for education and small businesses the opportunity to sell their goods to a global market.

“Starlink would change their lives for the better,” Mr. Musk said.

Within minutes, Mr. Musk penned another post, saying, “Starlink has proven to be essential for saving lives during natural disasters throughout the world, when all other communication systems have failed,” adding, “So you would also be helping save men, women and children throughout India.”

On Friday (October 9, 2026), Mr. Scindia said India doesn’t allow monopoly in any sector.

“Let me set the record straight. For us, the Department of Telecommunications, we are technology agnostic… Our job is to be able to provide the bouquet of services to every single customer. It is for the customer to choose in a free market which service he or she prefers, and within that service bouquet, which company’s service he or she prefers,” the Union minister said at a briefing at the India Mobile Congress in New Delhi.

Mr. Scindia said that three entities – Mr. Musk’s Starlink, Reliance Jio’s satellite venture Jio Satcom and Bharti-backed Eutelsat OneWeb – have already secured licences, while Amazon’s Kuiper has expressed interest and will need to undergo the established procedure.

While there is a lot of conversation about one particular company, three have got satcom licences, he said.

“We are very clear on our stand. There are three parties that have got a licence; as and when the government decides the charge system on the revenue basis, that spectrum will be assigned to them, and as and when they individually fulfil the security conditions, they can start operations,” the Minister said.

TRAI and the telecom department are close to a final decision on pricing regime for satcom spectrum, Mr. Scindia said.

Hitting out at the Congress in the backdrop of Rahul Gandhi and Mr. Musk’s exchange on X, the minister said, “As far as the Congress is concerned… I don’t think they themselves know whether they’re going left or right.”

He said the Congress initially had a problem with “a certain person getting a licence” and pointed out that “now they have a problem, and they’ve allied with that person in terms of why he’s not getting a licence”.

“So I don’t know whether they have clarity on where they’re going, but that is the case with the Congress, which is to be expected,” Mr. Scindia said.

The war of words came amid a spat over satcom services, with Mr. Musk alleging that Starlink is being blocked by certain oligarchs seeking to “maintain their monopolistic chokehold on the Indian people”.

As the India Mobile Congress (IMC) unfolded in the capital, the government and Mr. Musk traded barbs over satellite communications, with the Department of Telecommunications rejecting allegations that domestic business interests were blocking Starlink’s entry, prompting the tech billionaire to sarcastically ask whether “Ambani is the real boss of India”.

“Starlink is licensed in over 165 countries and has spent five years complying with every single law and requirement of the government of India, so why still no license?” Mr. Musk said in an X post earlier.

The Telecom Ministry has maintained that the country’s authorisation framework for telecom and satellite services is “fair and non-discriminatory” and that any suggestion that it was being applied selectively was “baseless and misconceived”.

Published – October 10, 2026 01:30 am IST

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and owner of X. File.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

President Donald Trump listens as Elon Musk speaks to reporters at the White House in Washington, Tuesday Sept. 29, 2026, after meeting with top executives of AI firms.
| Photo Credit: AP

The SpaceX initial public offering (IPO), set for June 12, on Nasdaq (SPCX) is expected to be the largest single listing in history. The company is targeting a $75 billion raise at a valuation of $1.75-2 trillion.

SpaceX is seeking a large liquidity influx to fund its Orbital Data Centre (ODC) initiative and terrestrial expansion of its artificial intelligence (AI) unit. The prospectus also reveals a mandatory “deleveraging” requirement whereby SpaceX must use its IPO proceeds to repay a $20 billion bridge loan within six months.

Early headwinds

Investors are already scrutinising the “Frankenco” structure of the company, where profits from the space-based Internet service Starlink are being used to offset xAI’s heavy losses, nearly $6.4 billion in 2025 alone.

Starlink is facing headwinds of its own. In May, in a bid to protect competitors like Eutelsat and OneWeb, the European Commission proposed new regulations to limit third-country, including U.S., satellite operators to only one-third of Europe’s bandwidth. This significantly shrinks Starlink’s market in a high-wealth region. Second, as more direct-to-cell services launch, the amount of noise in protected radio bands increases. Regulators are thus becoming more conservative with spectrum grants, thus imposing a ceiling on Starlink’s data throughput.

While pre-IPO deals with Google and Anthropic provide revenue bridge capacity, investor scepticism has stayed high. Analysts at Morningstar have already warned of a valuation bubble, pegging the company’s fair value at just $780 billion, which is less than half of SpaceX’s target.

Sceptics are also motivated by independent experts calling into question the viability of Musk’s ODC plans.

Financial complexity

In March, SpaceX secured a $20 billion bridge loan led by Goldman Sachs. A bridge loan is a short-term loan, usually for 6-18 months, for immediate liquidity until a larger and more permanent funding event, like an IPO, happens. This loan was used to retire $17.5 billion of high-interest junk debt sitting on the balance sheets of X and xAI. SpaceX’s S-1 filing clearly states that the company is required to use a portion of its IPO proceeds to repay this loan within six months.

Normally, an IPO generates capital for growth; in this case, that would be money to build more rockets. However, here, a significant portion of the $75 billion raised will be non-productive capital as it won’t go into R&D but to pay off a loan.

Likewise, in February 2026, SpaceX officially merged with xAI, folding the social network X (a subsidiary of xAI) and the Grok AI model into the SpaceX corporate structure. Morningstar analysts had flagged this as a “related-party transaction” (RPTs). That is, because Musk controlled all the involved entities, the price of the merger — $250 billion for xAI — was determined not by the open market but by internal deliberations. Investors generally dislike RPTs for this reason.

Morningstar’s scepticism was further bolstered by the fact that xAI was burning cash, and by merging it into SpaceX, its losses were being hidden inside the considerable revenue from Starlink. As a result, investors could have a harder time calculating the real burn rate of SpaceX’s core rocket business.

SpaceX’s AI push

The new valuation of $1.75-2 trillion also rests on the assumption that SpaceX will own the ‘rails’ of the AI economy. As part of this, SpaceX has proposed a new semiconductors fabricating facility dubbed Terafab in Grimes County, Texas, at a cost of $55-119 billion. The goal is to manufacture 1 terawatt of internal computing capacity per year. This will be in the form of custom GPUs for xAI models and SpaceX satellites.

In an IPO, however, this asks investors to buy shares based on what money SpaceX is making now from its existing businesses as well as the performance of a chip-making factory it has yet to build. Critics have already argued that SpaceX is trying to solve a supply-chain bottleneck by becoming its own supplier for the world’s most complex product — custom GPUs — which could lead to long delays.

The proposed ODC is tied to this. According to the filing with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, the constellation will have 1 million satellites with computing accelerators. The pitch seems to be that AI models running in orbit will be able to harvest 24/7 solar energy and bypass terrestrial land-use regulations. But it is no coincidence that to justify a $2 trillion valuation, SpaceX needs a total addressable market (TAM) larger than just launch services — and this is the ODC, an attempt to claim the AI cloud computing TAM.

However, thanks to risks like orbital debris, the insurance premiums and regulatory fines on the ODC alone could make all of SpaceX uninvestable.

Finally, to bolster the IPO, SpaceX signed a $30 billion agreement with Google through 2029 as part of which Google will pay around $920 million every month before the IPO to access SpaceX’s AI chip clusters, as bridge capacity for Google’s Gemini AI models. While this is SpaceX’s attempt to show that its AI-in-orbit business can be profitable, the catch is that Google is renting SpaceX’s terrestrial resources.

Concerns about the ODC

Independent experts have already raised serious questions about how a server in earth orbit will shed heat fast enough to keep operating — a considerable engineering challenge on the ground even with convection (the natural movement of air from warmer to cooler areas) to help. There is no air in space, however, so there is no convective cooling.

Another option is radiation, but here the Stefan-Boltzmann law stands in the way. Effectively, to shed 1 MW of waste heat — corresponding to a small terrestrial datacenter — at 20° C, a satellite will need around 1,200 sq. m of radiator area, larger than the wingspan of a Boeing 747. Engineering sceptics have already estimated that the mass of the radiators required to cool a gigawatt-scale computational facility in orbit would make the satellites too heavy to be cost-effective, even with Starship’s reduced launch costs.

Second, high-performance AI chips, like the NVIDIA H100s or SpaceX’s custom silicon, are very sensitive to single-event upsets (SEUs) from cosmic rays. In an SEU, a single charged particle striking a sensitive part of a microelectronic device can change its state. So these chips will have to be ‘hardened’ to radiation, which will reduce their performance by orders of magnitude. An alternative plan to launch consumer-grade chips and replace them every 2-3 years would heighten the space debris risk and inflate costs beyond profitability.

Gambler’s scheme

By using SpaceX IPO proceeds to pay off the bridge loan, Musk is effectively shifting debt from a private, struggling entity to a public and successful one. Second, if the $1.75 trillion valuation is the “bubble” Morningstar suggests it is, new investors will essentially provide the exit liquidity for the banks. Third, even if SpaceX captures 100% of the global launch market, that is only a roughly $20 billion/year industry. And if the ODC is physically impossible or economically unviable due to the cooling constraints, the $2 trillion valuation will effectively be based on a phantom product. Finally, by announcing a capital-intensive project in the form of Terafab, SpaceX is trying to force the market to keep funding it.

Taken together, it has many signs of a Ponzi scheme — but it isn’t one. Instead, it is a gamble. Musk is betting that he can build Terafab and the ODC fast enough for the revenue they generate to dwarf the $20 billion debt he dumped into the company. But this is also why the S&P 500, perhaps the gold standard for stability and retirement funds, has refused to waive its strict inclusion rules for SpaceX, essentially calling Musk’s bluff on the company’s financial health.

Ultimately, if the ODC also fails, SpaceX will be left a successful rocket company with an unsustainable debt load and a stock price that could drop 70-80% once the AI hype has been stripped off.

mukunth.v@thehindu.co.in

SpaceX’s Starship 39 rocket launches from Starbase during the 12th test flight as seen from South Padre Island, Texas, on May 22, 2026.
| Photo Credit: AFP

In 2015, a small group of researchers and technology entrepreneurs gathered in San Francisco to create what they described as a gift to humanity, eventually to turn into enemies defining the future of artificial intelligence (AI) in a courtroom.

Elon Musk loses blockbuster OpenAI suit as jury says too late

OpenAI was founded on the premise that if artificial general intelligence (AGI) was coming regardless, it was better to have safety and ethics-conscious researchers build it. AGI is the kind of AI that can match or surpass human cognition. The group decided to create the initiative as a nonprofit and if the technology ever arrived, it would belong to everyone, as open source. OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman even went as far as to design the company’s board such that it could fire him too if he ever came in the way of its core mission. That founding promise, to build ethical AGI, years later brought Elon Musk and Mr. Altman to a federal courthouse in California.

Eleven years since the founding, no longer friends and both pursuing their own paths to AGI, Mr. Musk and Mr. Altman are both convinced that the other has betrayed everything they had vowed to build together.

Mr. Musk brought forward the lawsuit against Mr. Altman, accusing him, OpenAI president Greg Brockman, and Microsoft, of manipulating him into donating to a public-interest organisation only for it to later attach a for-profit subsidiary and accept billions from Microsoft.

On May 18, a nine-person jury took less than two hours to throw out Mr. Musk’s case against Mr. Altman. The verdict did not settle the question of whether OpenAI broke faith with its founding mission but instead, it was settled on a procedural issue – that Mr. Musk had waited too long to sue. In the American legal system, civil claims must be filed within a fixed window of time, crossing which the claim becomes invalid. The jury said Mr. Musk’s claim fell outside the statute of limitations. The judge concurred, but Mr. Musk’s lawyers have signalled that they might appeal. The merits of the case were never discussed.

The nonprofit debate

Trial testimony and evidence showed OpenAI’s leadership had anxiously tracked Google’s acquisition of another AI research giant DeepMind in 2014.

OpenAI’s executives argued that the nonprofit structure was not sufficient to compete with bigshots like Google.

Mr. Musk was the company’s biggest early donor, contributing around $38 million. But, the economics of building AGI turned out to be brutal. Training large models requires computing infrastructure that costs billions of dollars. By 2019, a year after Mr. Musk’s departure from the OpenAI board, the company decided it could not remain competitive as a pure nonprofit. It attached a for-profit subsidiary to the existing organisation, with the nonprofit retaining oversight and a capped return structure for investors.

Microsoft came in with an initial investment that year, and kept coming, eventually investing more than $135 billion and holding a significant share in OpenAI. This is the transformation Mr. Musk’s lawsuit sought to attack, from nonprofit to a commercially driven AI laboratory he had set out to oppose.

Claims that did not make it to trial

The bit that went to trial eventually was a much smaller subsect of the original claims Mr. Musk had filed in 2024. Several of his claims were dropped or narrowed before the trial even began.

Mr. Musk claimed that Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI had aided it to breach its charitable mission. But, despite a Microsoft executive testifying that the company had invested billions in OpenAI, the jury dismissed the claim.

Mr. Musk also filed an antitrust claim against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that the two companies were colluding to dominate the AI market. This claim has not reached the jury yet. Judge Gonzalez Rogers heard arguments and signalled she was sceptical, noting the aggressive competition already playing out across the AI industry. She has not ruled on it, meaning that particular thread remains unresolved. OpenAI on its part filed a countersuit accusing Mr. Musk of running a years-long harassment campaign against the company. A judge ruled in August 2025 that those claims were legally sufficient to go forward. That case is separate and still ongoing.

Key takeaways from the proceedings

The legal question the jury resolved was procedural. But the three weeks of testimony preceding the verdict were pure Silicon Valley tech theatre.

Mr. Musk’s lawyers assembled a long roster of witnesses who testified that Mr. Altman is not trustworthy. Mira Murati, who served as OpenAI’s chief technology officer, told the court that Mr. Altman had lied about a safety review in the past. Ilya Sutskever, one of the company’s founding researchers, had spent more than a year building a case for Mr. Altman’s removal from the company, assembling a 52-page memo that described a pattern of dishonesty and internal manipulation – a case widely covered in media.

In November 2023, OpenAI’s board briefly fired Mr. Altman and reversed course within days, primarily under pressure from Microsoft. Mr. Altman returned and Mr. Sutskever eventually left the company.

OpenAI’s lawyers demonstrated that while still on the board in 2017, Mr. Musk himself had pushed to restructure OpenAI as a for-profit entity, including an attempt to fold it into Tesla under his control.

Mr. Musk’s argument that he had always opposed commercialisation now sat awkwardly alongside evidence that he had sought to commercialise the company himself, especially on the condition that he be in charge. Musk’s own xAI, founded in 2023 and now part of SpaceX, is a for-profit company.

The larger question

The immediate winner from the latest verdict is OpenAI. The lawsuit had cast a shadow over the company’s plans for its upcoming IPO that could value it at close to a trillion dollars. Mr. Musk has said he will appeal.

There is a larger question the verdict leaves entirely unanswered. The trial showed how OpenAI’s founding principles were abandoned in pursuit of competition. The nonprofit structure still exists, and the OpenAI nonprofit now controls assets of more than $200 billion. But what that oversight means in practice was not explored in court.

Published – May 20, 2026 07:30 am IST

Washington and Beijing have been at loggerheads over key issues ranging from trade tariffs to the Iran war to Taiwan [File]
| Photo Credit: AP