Launched by Musk in 2024, the lawsuit is the culmination of a years-long feud that centres on the evolution of OpenAI from a non-profit to a for-profit enterprise.

The trial, which kicked off this week in California, is expected to last roughly three weeks. But its ripple effects could be felt for many years to come.

The case and the cast

The lawsuit pits Musk against Altman, OpenAI president Greg Brockman, OpenAI itself, and Microsoft, the AI firm’s largest backer.

Musk cofounded and helped fund OpenAI to the tune of about US$44 million. By his own account from the witness stand this week, he “came up with the idea, the name, recruited the key people, taught them everything I know, provided all of the initial funding”.

Brockman served as technical cofounder; Altman became chief executive in 2019. Their alliance with Musk fractured as the organisation grew. Musk departed the board in 2018. He says he was pushed out.

However, OpenAI says he walked when denied majority control. Musk subsequently launched his own rival AI venture, xAI, which is now part of SpaceX.

What Musk is alleging

As part of the lawsuit, Musk is alleging breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, false advertising and unfair business practices.

His core claim is that Altman and Brockman induced him to donate on the understanding that any artificial general intelligence – or AGI – built at OpenAI would stay “open” and shared with humanity.

Instead, Musk argues, the founders turned the charity into a “wealth machine”. They did this in two stages. First, via a 2019 capped-profit subsidiary. Here, OpenAI’s for-profit unit limited the returns, with the excess handed back to the nonprofit. Second, through a full restructure into a public benefit corporation, which is now valued at roughly US$852 billion.

Musk’s lawyers told jurors Altman and Brockman “stole a charity, full stop”. Outside court, Musk has been throwing insults at his opponents, prompting the judge to threaten a gag order.

OpenAI flatly rejects Musk’s narrative. As its lead counsel, William Savitt, told jurors:

We are here because Mr Musk didn’t get his way with OpenAI.

The company alleges, as described in two pre-trial blog posts, that Musk himself proposed merging OpenAI with Tesla in 2017 and walked away when denied majority control.

The lawsuit, OpenAI says, is “motivated by jealousy” and designed to damage a competitor.

A company under pressure

The trial arrives at a precarious moment for OpenAI.

The New Yorker magazine recently published an investigation describing Altman as a “pathological liar”. The investigation drew on an internal dossier compiled by OpenAI’s former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever which alleged a “consistent pattern of lying” to the company’s board.

Altman called the piece “incendiary” but acknowledged “a bunch of mistakes”. Musk has been amplifying the article to his X followers throughout the trial.

Financially, OpenAI is bleeding.

Internal projections point to roughly US$14 billion in losses for 2026 alone, with cumulative losses expected to top US$44 billion before any profit materialises.

Shortly before the trial began, OpenAI quietly shut down Sora, its flagship video-generation model.

Before closing, it burned around US$1 million a day in computing costs. The closure took down a US$1 billion Disney partnership with it.

Even a fresh US$122 billion fundraise from Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank has not eased the pressure.

What Musk wants

Musk wants the jury to unwind OpenAI’s for-profit conversion, remove Altman from the nonprofit board, and strip both Altman and Brockman of their roles in the for-profit entity.

He is also demanding US$130 billion in damages from OpenAI – for what his team calls “ill-gotten gains”.

He has accused Microsoft of “aiding and abetting” and argues it is liable for a share.

His legal team argues OpenAI’s existing models already constitute AGI, because they have surpassed human intelligence in many tasks. Under the founding agreement, AGI could not be commercially licensed. This would include the licence currently used by Microsoft for CoPilot.

What’s at stake

If Musk wins, the consequences would be significant.

OpenAI’s planned initial public offering would almost certainly be derailed. This is expected in late 2026 at a US$1 trillion valuation. Investors in the recent funding round could face clawbacks.

Altman, the public face of the AI boom, could be removed from the company he has led since 2019. The broader question of whether AI labs founded as charities can lawfully pivot into commercial enterprises would be settled, at least in California. This has potential implications for Anthropic and other mission-driven peers.

Even a defeat for Musk would not end the controversy.

The trial has already pried open Silicon Valley’s normally sealed boardrooms, surfacing diaries, Slack threads and HR memos that paint an unflattering portrait of OpenAI’s governance.

The case crystallises a wider public anxiety: an incredibly powerful technology is being built and controlled by a tiny number of feuding tech bros. And it’s the rest of us who have to live with the consequences.

• Rob Nicholls is a Senior Research Associate in Media and Communications, University of Sydney
• This article first appeared in The Conversation

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If you’re more of a second-generation buyer, your chance is coming to spend vast sums on the XT’s successor. A rumour out of China reckons that Huawei has its sequel brewing. The projected launch is for October this year, giving you plenty of time to secure a deposit. Or a bank loan.

Need another Mate XT?

The rumour comes via Hyperdimension Realm, a Weibo account. The leaker claims the October launch date and lists some of the device’s key specs. Internally, Huawei’s own Kirin 9050 chipset is supposed to power the foldable. A larger battery, up to 6,000mAh from 5,600mAh, is also expected. We don’t see the Chinese company going much harder on the other specs than the existing 16GB/1TB configuration. The ongoing RAM shortage might well drive the price even higher, however.

Camera performance is supposed to be on par with the Huawei Mate X7. Fans paying the expected price should be pleased with the 50MP/50MP/40MP rear camera setup, assuming the lenses turn out to be identical.

Elsewhere, Huawei’s Mate XT 2 will apparently feature drawing support (so a stylus could be included), and the physical device is also undergoing an upgrade. It seems that the “hinge technology has been greatly improved, and the creases have been significantly reduced.”

We’ll have to wait for official word from Huawei on the new version of the tri-fold smartphone, but nothing claimed here is outlandish. Odds are good that an October release will be China-only, with other countries getting the device early in 2027.

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We might be about to find out.

According to a new paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, we are entering the era of “evolvable AI” – AI systems that can undergo evolution. In turn, that might give rise to a major transition in evolution.

How major is “major”? Well, in nearly 4 billion years, there have only been eight, or perhaps only seven, other major transitions. But we’ll get to that in a moment.

The ingredients for evolution

Evolution doesn’t require DNA, cells or even biological life. It just needs information that can replicate, and a source of variation that affects how successfully the information replicates.

When these conditions exist, evolution happens, whether anybody intended it to or not.

Modern AI systems already meet these conditions. Models can be copied. Their parameters, architectures and training data can vary. And some variants perform in ways that make them more likely to be reused, refined or deployed.

Evolution has long operated outside biology. It shapes languages, technologies and cultures. But AI introduces something different: systems that are both information-rich and can influence their own reproduction.

That combination raises the stakes dramatically.

Two scenarios for ‘evolvable AI’

The authors of the new paper recognise two broad AI evolution scenarios that could influence both how selection happens, and the kinds of consequences that might flow on.

Ecosystem scenario

The ecosystem scenario eventuates when AI variants compete, recombine and propagate with little top-down oversight. The better an AI is at persisting and spreading, the more successful it is.

Science fiction authors, AI pioneers, and contemporary AI risk experts have long recognised the dangers of such untrammelled and chaotic Darwinian evolution. The fear of self-replicating AIs is an evolutionary fear, even if it doesn’t name evolution explicitly.

Every new AI model, however different, inadvertently adds to the supply of the fuel consumed by natural selection: variation. And we’re not dealing with a single AI but an ecosystem bustling with various machines and humans.

Breeder scenario

Charles Darwin based his idea of natural selection on how animal and plant breeders deliberately select which individuals to breed from. In the wild, nature does the selecting, hence “natural selection”.

The second evolvable AI scenario recognises the power of breeder-based selection – the force that domesticated so many animals and plants, from dogs and cattle to wheat and rice.

Last year, philosophers Maarten Boudry and Simon Friederich proposed that if AI evolution is directed in a top-down fashion (much like deliberate breeding), AI might remain in human control. Evolution still occurs, but it shapes the AI into tamed beasts of computational burden that serve humanity – or, at least, whoever owns the machine.

Within the framework of these two scenarios, the authors apply a sound and comprehensive analysis of what biology can tell us about AI’s potential evolutionary trajectories.

Evolution upgraded

In biology, variation comes from random genetic mutations. The potential for evolution is constrained by this blind source of variation.

AI need not be constrained in the same way. Indeed, the potential exists for AIs to plot the course of their own evolution. They could find the variation they need to follow that route. It may even exist on the internet.

This is similar to how bacteria evolve antibiotic resistance by copying the genes that other, quite different lineages of bacteria have already evolved. With this horizontal gene transfer there’s no waiting in hope for the right mutations.

AI could potentially do something similar. The authors of the new paper argue that a large language model could predict what functionality it needs to replicate and survive, and then find and incorporate code to achieve just that.

The authors recognise that if we maintain breeder-like control over evolvable AI, it will be less likely to pose catastrophic risks, such as dominating humans or outcompeting them for resources.

But the potential for an evolvable AI to escape and run feral always remains.

Is it a major transition, though?

One of the paper’s authors, evolutionary biologist Eörs Szathmáry, introduced the idea of “major transitions in evolution” in a landmark 1995 book with the late evolutionary theorist John Maynard Smith.

For example, ancient life used to involve RNA, a relatively fragile molecule that functioned as both the genetic information and the protein that did the organism’s work.

A major transition was the evolution of DNA – it made the information more stable and required the production of proteins as a separate act. This fundamentally changed how genetic information is encoded and used, and made possible great increases in the complexity of living things.

At each subsequent transition, the thing doing the evolving became more complicated – from single-celled life to multicelled life and so on.

The new paper argues that some current trends in AI resemble what happens in major transitions. AI systems are scaling up and expanding in complexity. New training and development methods reorganise how AIs process information. And AI agent teams working together are shifting the concept of what a “single” AI even is.

It’s certainly interesting that evolution within the AI ecosystem is following trends seen in the major transitions in biological evolution. But these things also happen, on a smaller scale, during business-as-usual evolution. They should not yet be interpreted as evidence that AI represents a major transition fit to be listed with those that transformed biological life.

There are, however, many ways evolvable AI could effect a major transition in evolution. Generating an entirely new realm of intelligent life would do the trick.

Another possibility is the rise of co-evolving human-machine symbiosis, akin to our relationship with smartphones. That could create a new kind of individual somewhere between biological and artificial life. If such a development took hold, it would definitely constitute a major evolutionary transition.

• Rob Brooks is a Scientia Professor of Evolution, UNSW Sydney
• This article first appeared in The Conversation

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Start running, diesel drivers

Fortunately, the government is set to extend its fuel tax relief scheme for the next two months. Petrol drivers will see up to R3/l knocked off their bill in May, while diesel drivers can expect savings of R3.93/l. What that will look like, considering the Central Energy Fund’s (CEF) latest fuel price snapshots predict a sub-R3 increase in petrol prices, is still unclear. The most likely outcome is that petrol drivers will see no change to prices come May.

We can’t say the same for diesel. Despite facing a roughly R7/l price hike in April (after government intervention), the pain isn’t stopping there. May is set to bring about another hike, currently in the ballpark of around R4.95/l. Of course, the relief program should counter much of the hike, leaving a smaller increase behind.

We should note that the CEF’s daily predictive snapshot is not final and is subject to change. It, in conjunction with the DMRE, tracks those economic factors that influence the price of fuel locally. Namely, the average Rand/US Dollar exchange rate, as well as the price of oil globally. Yeah, it’s all making sense now, right?

Read More: SA motorists have two more months of fuel tax relief to look forward to

This provides Saffas with an accurate glimpse into the coming fuel price adjustments and allows them to plan accordingly. These figures, captured on Wednesday, 29 April, will likely be close to the real thing, seeing as it falls right around the end of the DMRE’s review period. The official adjustments will be announced early next week — possibly on Monday, 4 May — or Tuesday, 5 May.

Here are the petrol and diesel price predictions (so far) for May 2026:

• Petrol 93: increase of 173 cents per litre (R1.73)
• Petrol 95: increase of 204 cents per litre (R2.04)
• Diesel 0.05%: increase of 496 cents per litre (R4.96)
• Diesel 0.005%: increase of 497 cents per litre (R4.97)
• Illuminating Paraffin: increase of 524 cents per litre (R5.24)

The CEF’s figures above do not account for the government’s extended relief program, nor the slate levy, which could impact prices negatively come Wednesday, 6 May. We should also note that the CEF does not offer data pertaining to LP Gas, leaving its price adjustments a mystery until the DMRE confirms them next week. 

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If you aren’t familiar with Wilson Audio, one look at this thing might make you question what you’re looking at. If you are familiar, you might think it looks awfully similar to the company’s previous flagship, the WAMM Master Chronosonic.

Well, in the company’s words, “Autobiography is not a compilation of prior solutions. It is the result of understanding why those solutions succeeded, and how they could be refined, reimagined, and elevated.”

Are you sure that’s a speaker?

In case you aren’t embedded in the audiophile world, part of Wilson Audio’s whole shtick is its unwavering approach to time alignment between drivers. You can dive into that here, but it essentially boils down to the precise placement of the drivers so that all their soundwaves hit your ear at exactly the same time. Not, like, 0.01ms apart, at exactly the same time.

Like some of its previous speakers, the Autobiography’s construction consists of a lower bass section, which houses dual woofers (one 15in driver, and another 12in driver) and a baffle, which is reinforced with a thick layer of damping material. Above that, the open-air gantry supports the midrange and tweeter modules, which have, along with the time-alignment mechanism, been ‘rethought from first principles’. As if that wasn’t impressive enough, the Autobiography also uses something called “V-Material” at all the points where driver enclosures meet their supporting structure.

All of the drivers have been developed specifically for this speaker, of course. In total, there are eight drivers, including one 1in forward-firing tweeter, two 2in upper midrange units, two 7in lower midrange units, the two aforementioned woofers, and a single 1in rear-firing tweeter. All of these units can have their position adjusted, down to the millimetre, to achieve the excellence in time-alignment that Wilson Audio is famous for.

If this sounds like something you’d be keen on, you’ll need to get on the horn with Wilson Audio. At over 2m tall, a total system shipping weight of 1,059.14 kg, and a US MSRP of $788,000 (around R13.2 million), you won’t be popping down to any local audio store to pick up a pair.

Source

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Grab it by the handle

Pony up, and you’ll be rewarded with a cordless, premium handheld vacuum that proved fairly easy to set up and even easier to use. It doesn’t look particularly special. Its drab grey aesthetic does a good job of concealing any excess dirt that didn’t make it inside the vac. It’ll likely just be shoved out of sight, anyway.

That’s assuming you don’t use the included wall mount. As handy as it is to reach over and hoover up a bit of dirt, sticking utilities to the wall won’t gel well with everyone’s decor. It didn’t for us, but the option is there, ready to hold up to four of your most-used accessories. The rest? You’ll have to find them a new home.

Speaking of which, the G30 Max doesn’t skimp on the little extras that speed up the grander task. There are seven in total, some of which you’re probably familiar with and… some that you’re not. One of those is a designated pet brush that we’re afraid to say never quite made contact with our cats. We imagine that’s more a problem with the cat manufacturer than the G30 Max itself. Put a dog in its path, though? It’ll fare a bit better.

All the brushes and extension rods connect to the central handheld component, which houses a 4,000mAh lithium-ion polymer battery and a display to keep track of it all. It’s also where you’ll open up the attached 800ml dustbin. It was more than roomy enough for a single pass of our house (three bedrooms, a kitchen, and a lounge).

So far, so good, right? On paper, yes. But it all comes at the cost of waving around a 5kg hunk of plastic that’ll tire out the arms of smaller users by the time the battery nears its end. The added weight may ease the regret of an R8,800 purchase somewhat, but you may feel differently after lugging it around for 90 minutes.

Suction to the Maxth degree

Upon turning the G30 Max on, you’ll have a decision to make. Not a particularly big one — this isn’t Sophie’s Choice — but a decision nonetheless. There are three cleaning modes — eco, auto, and turbo — each designed to tackle different tasks. Be warned, you’ll likely stay away from eco until you hit the hardwood or tiled floors.

Give it something a bit more hectic — say, a cat-hair-ridden shaggy carpet that covers nearly every inch of the floor — and you’ll want to stick it in Turbo and leave it at that. Of course, auto mode is also an option if you’ve got a bit more manoeuvrability in the carpet department of your house. It’ll ramp up (or down) power as it sees fit.

Even in auto, the G30 Max hardly ever scaled down from Turbo. Not until we hit the (gratefully) un-carpeted kitchen, anyway. That shortened our runtime significantly, but it was well worth the sacrifice. We’ll never quite know whether the five-stage filtration system really did trap 99.98% of dust, but we’ve got no reason to doubt that claim after seeing the results. With 280AW (Air Watts) of power to draw on in Turbo mode, how could it not?

We had the most success with the electric brush bar accessory, which handles both tile and carpet, removing unnecessary barriers when moving from room to room. It’s also equipped with an LED light, literally highlighting all the dirt your, uh, normal vacuum missed. The ‘sofa’ brush also proved handy, and sucked up the leftover debris from movie night without complaint. It even handled our mattress, but didn’t get much exercise there.

We rarely ever let the standard extension rod out of our sight, as it allowed floor access without much hunching over. But on the odd occasion we needed to get up high, or behind that pestilential TV cabinet, the rest of the bits all had their uses. The extension hose got around corners easily without losing much manoeuvrability on our end, while the bendy tube (paired with the ‘crevice’ brush) navigated tight spaces on shelves.

You’ve got your whole life ahead of you

The Xiaomi G30 Max is a bit hit-or-miss when it comes to battery life. Sure, Xiaomi’s claim of a 90-minute-long life seems impressive — until you realise it’s talking about eco mode. That’s fine, if the only rug it’ll ever meet is the welcome mat at the door. The more carpet you give it, the shorter that runtime will last.

For a house covered almost head-to-foundation with shaggy carpet, we eked out a little over twenty minutes of life before dashing back to the charger. That’s without taking it out of turbo mode. Knock it down to auto and give it a few tiles, and it’ll stretch to roughly 35 minutes of life. Not bad. Not great.

We’d have liked to see Xiaomi take a page out of Dyson’s book and chuck us a swappable battery for our troubles (and R8,800). Even as a separate, optional purchase. It’d do a lot to ease that nagging voice at the back of your head, urging you to hurry up before the battery hits zero. Sadly, that 4,000mAh battery isn’t going anywhere.

While we can adjust our cleaning routines to accommodate the G30 Max, there’s no escaping the nearly 3.5-hour charge time. While we had no issue covering our house in one go, larger homes may not be quite so lucky. A ‘break from cleaning’ means we’re done for the day where we come from.

Xiaomi G30 Max verdict

At R8,800, the Xiaomi G30 isn’t the slam dunk we’d hoped for. If you can drop that kinda dough, you likely won’t be the one using it. It’ll be the help™ who will thank you for making their jobs simpler, and the home that much tidier. Don’t get us wrong. It’s powerful, versatile, and handled everything we threw at it without complaint.

It’s undeniably convenient, too, once you cut the cord — but that convenience comes at the cost of a rather weighty unit and middling battery life. If you’ve found yourself itching to ditch the cord, the G30 Max will serve you well. Everyone else… might find themselves getting over whatever spat they had with their corded appliance.

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It’s definitely launching, with Honor opening pre-orders already in its home country. Hopefully, like the Watch 5, it’ll eventually make its way to South Africa. For the projected battery life, if nothing else.

Watch 6 Plus signs

The major clues as to Honor’s plans for its newest smartwatch are mostly based on the company’s visuals. The Watch 6 Plus looks to be a premium device, with a solid design for both the chassis and strap options. There’s leather (vegan, or otherwise) and what looks to be silicon or rubber in the offing. Stainless steel is probably the build material for the casing. Titanium would be nice, but it would also be quite a bit pricier.

Otherwise? There’s little to go on so far. The 6 Plus will support running functions, according to Honor, and there’s a special badminton mode coming for folks who can’t keep their hands off their shuttlecock. But it’s the claimed battery life that’s most impressive.

We’re used to claims (and follow-through) of two-week batteries from both Honor and Huawei wearables. Honor reckons this one will go a little further, with an excellent 35 days of uptime in between charges. We’ll know if there are terms and conditions attached when the watch is fully announced, but it looks, for now, as if Honor has just opted for a bigger battery this time around.

Source

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Exactly what those wonders are remains to be seen, but speculation is that there’s a new version of the company’s Osmo Mobile 8 coming. The educated guess is based on the only item clearly seen in DJI’s announcement teaser, which looks suspiciously like a remote control.

Why yes, I am a DJI

Wonders in Your Palm
May 7, 2026 | 8 AM (EDT)
Learn More: https://t.co/hoC0Yynnqp pic.twitter.com/m0THt9XkM8

— DJI (@DJIGlobal) April 28, 2026

The Chinese company could well announce the Osmo Mobile 8P, a higher-end version of its existing camera-toting gimbal. Details of that one were previously unearthed for the Chinese market, and it’s not like there’s no precedent. The Osmo Mobile 7 got a pricier 7P version after launch.

A better tripod system, the ability to hold thicker smartphones, and a combination remote control/magnetic display are just a few of the upgrades buyers can expect from the May 2026 event. There may be more coming, but it’s not immediately obvious from the teaser.

If you’re keen on tuning in, the 7 May event starts at 14h00 SAST (South African Standard Time). The mid-afternoon presentation is a pleasant alternative to doing your actual job, at least.

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The most interesting thing? A potential battery life of multiple years. Possibly as many as five, if the work done by the folks who found the regulator filings is accurate.

Core value

There are other details available via the listing, but that’s the main one. The wearable will (or should) be powered by a replaceable CR3032 coin battery. Coupled with Bluetooth Low Energy, it could run without needing to hit a charger for up to two years. The writer at The5KRunner suggests that up to five years might be possible.

Otherwise, the Suunto Core 2 will have a stainless steel chassis and water resistance up to 100 metres. Beyond that, specs are thin for the expected wearable. The model number, OW245, is known, at least.

Since the device is a direct sequel to Suunto’s older device, which has had several spinoffs since, we can expect it to include hiking-specific functions. An upgraded altimeter, barometer, compass, and depth sensor are almost certainly coming. A software upgrade is probably also in the works.

Whatever else the Finnish company adds will have to wait until it’s official. Since the gadget’s details are at the FCC, it probably won’t be too long before something official turns up.

Source

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Losing Vision

That’s according to MacRumors, which reckons that interest has waned in the device ever since it hit shelves in 2024, reportedly selling around 600,000 units. At $3,500 a pop, that’s still a pretty penny, but not the long-life cash cow that it had initially hoped for. Insiders say that Apple saw an unusually high number of returns, too.

More so than any other Apple product, anyway. This myriad of disasters was enough for Apple to admit defeat and call quits on the Vision Pro. Apple isn’t actually discontinuing the headset, at least not right away. The M5 refresh model is still on shelves, and likely will be for quite some time. At that price, is anyone surprised?

Read More: The Apple TV’s next act could bring about a new chip and smarter Siri integration

The report mentions that the employees who worked on the Vision Pro team have been scattered throughout the company to work elsewhere. Some of them have been shunted down to the Siri team, currently headed up by Mike Rockwell, who, incidentally, headed up the Vision Pro division until March 2025.

Apple isn’t giving up on the space entirely, it seems. We’ve known for quite some time that the company was developing a pair of smart glasses. Even back in October, reports claimed that the glasses had usurped the Vision Pro on its list of priorities. Now, it’s fallen even further out of favour, jeopardising its future for good.

Source

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