OpenAI and Elon Musk have agreed to fast-track a trial over OpenAI’s for-profit shift.
TakeAway Points:
- Elon Musk and OpenAI have agreed to expedite a trial regarding OpenAI’s for-profit transition.
- China’s Baidu announced on Sunday that it has introduced two new models of artificial intelligence, one of which was centered on reasoning.
OpenAI and Elon Musk to settle trial fast
The latest turn in a grudge match between the world’s richest person and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman playing out publicly in court.
Billionaire Elon Musk and OpenAI jointly proposed a trial in December, according to a federal court filing on Friday.
The parties agreed to delay a decision on whether the expedited case will be decided by a jury or solely by the judge, said the filing in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
The judge this month denied Musk’s request to pause the artificial intelligence group’s transition to a for-profit model but agreed to an expedited trial in the autumn, the latest turn in the high-stakes legal fight.
“We welcome the court’s March 4 decision rejecting Elon Musk’s latest attempt to slow down OpenAI for his personal benefit,” OpenAI said in a blog post on Friday.
Musk cofounded OpenAI with Altman in 2015 but left before the company took off and subsequently founded the competing startup xAI in 2023.
Last year, the CEO of Tesla and owner of the X social media platform sued OpenAi and Altman, accusing OpenAI of straying from its founding mission — to develop AI for the good of humanity, not corporate profit.
OpenAI and Altman have denied the allegations, while Altman alleges that Musk has been trying to slow down a competitor.
At stake in the lawsuit is the ChatGPT maker’s transition to a for-profit model, which the startup says is crucial to raising more capital and competing well in the expensive AI race.
OpenAI’s last fundraising round, of $6.6 billion, and a new round of up to $40 billion under discussion with SoftBank Group , are conditioned on OpenAI restructuring to remove the nonprofit’s control.
Friday’s filing comes weeks after Altman, who has said OpenAI is not for sale, rejected a $97.4 billion unsolicited takeover bid from a Musk-led consortium with a “no thank you.”
China’s Baidu launches two new AI models
China’s Baidu said on Sunday it has launched two new artificial intelligence models, including a new reasoning-focused model that it said rivalled DeepSeek’s model, as it vies to stand out in a fiercely competitive AI race.
Chinese AI startup DeepSeek’s roll-out of AImodels, which it says is on par with, or even better than, industry-leading models in the United States at a fraction of the cost, has roiled the industry and re-energized the global AI race.
“ERNIE X1 delivers performance on par with DeepSeek R1 at only half the price,” Baidu said of one of the new models. The X1 has “stronger understanding, planning, reflection, and evolution capabilities,” Baidu said, adding that it is the first deep thinking model that uses tools autonomously.
Baidu said its latest foundation model ERNIE 4.5 has “excellent multimodal understanding ability. It has more advanced language ability, and its understanding, generation, logic, and memory abilities are comprehensively improved.”
It also has “high EQ”, and it is easy to understand network memes and satirical cartoons, Baidu said.
One of China’s earliest tech giants to launch a ChatGPT-style chatbot, Baidu has struggled to gain widespread adoption for its Ernie large language model, despite claiming performance comparable to OpenAI’s GPT-4, amid fierce competition.
Multimodal AI systems are capable of processing and integrating various types of data including text, video, images and audio, and can convert content across these formats.
