|
Thanks for reading The Briefing, our nightly column where we break down the day’s news. If you like what you see, I encourage you to subscribe to our reporting here. Greetings! Elon Musk might have won the battle over OpenAI’s future, but who’s to say Sam Altman isn’t going to win the war? Today’s announcement by the ChatGPT creator that it was abandoning plans to move its for-profit arm out from under control of the nonprofit—conceding to Musk’s legal efforts to stop the restructuring—could end up cementing Altman’s power at OpenAI. After all, OpenAI will remain a company whose controlling shareholder is the nonprofit. So whoever controls the nonprofit controls OpenAI. My colleague Stephanie Palazzolo is hearing that OpenAI’s existing board will decide who sits on the nonprofit’s board in the future, when the company creates separate boards for the nonprofit and for-profit arms. And it’s reasonable to assume Altman has a lot of sway with that existing board, which is very different from the one that fired him in November 2023, sparking a drama that led to his return a few days later and a board shake-up. For one thing, the board is now a lot bigger—with 10 members, including Altman, most of whom have joined in the past year or so. It’s hard to imagine that as OpenAI gradually added new members to the board, Altman let anyone antipathetic to his ambitions join. The only potential wrinkle in Altman’s effective control of OpenAI going forward is whether state regulators get a say in nonprofit’s administration. Barring that, he appears to be well positioned. Musk might have thought that by blocking OpenAI’s restructuring, he could hobble its efforts to raise money and make it easier for his own AI startup, xAI, to take the lead in the field. But today’s decision shouldn’t hamstring OpenAI’s fund raising. An IPO should be easily doable once OpenAI distributes regular shares in the for-profit business to its investors, replacing the rights they now have to future profits, as OpenAI said today would still occur. All investors surely care about is OpenAI’s market lead, which seems undiminished, at least right now. Investors buying into the company won’t have any say over how it is run, but that’s no different from the situation with countless public tech companies—including both Meta Platforms and Alphabet—where dual-class share structures give founders absolute control. Investors obsessed about exposure to AI have demonstrated they’re not concerned about having a say. Former OpenAI executive Mira Murati is currently raising money for her new startup, Thinking Machines Lab, on terms that would ensure her absolute control over board votes, we reported last week. Investors might one day wish they had control over OpenAI, but right now, that’s far from their minds. A delightful new streaming-video comedy, “Étoile,” about the quirky dramas accompanying a talent swap between the New York and Paris ballet companies, could at times be mistaken for an Apple commercial. A choreographer is never seen without his AirPods Max headphones around his neck or Apple Watch on his wrist, and iPhones and Airpods are de rigueur for the executives. The only surprise is that this show doesn’t stream on Apple TV+ but on Amazon Prime Video. Whether or not the Apple product placement on “Étoile” is deliberate, it demonstrates that Apple doesn’t need its own streaming service to promote its products. Why then is Apple still spending a small fortune to run Apple TV+? We provided some idea how much the service is costing in this March scoop, which has more detail than Apple has ever shared about the service’s finances. When the iPhone maker reported its March-quarter earnings last week, CEO Tim Cook seemed to be about to make news on that subject when he said, “Apple TV+ has earned more than…” He then went on to recite the number of award nominations the service had garnered. The mystery of why this service exists is as deep as ever. On a related subject, Business Insider reported today that Google has partnered with a production company to finance films and TV shows through which it can provide a “positive view of its products.” One of the first films it helped finance was a horror movie, “Cuckoo,” which seems a strange way to promote tech (of course, some might say social media is a bit of a horror show, so maybe Google wants to promote other tech companies’ products as well!). • Trading platform eToro is moving ahead with plans for an IPO, making it one of the first companies to do so after tariff-induced market turmoil froze the IPO market last month. The Israel-based company is seeking to raise up to $500 million, according to an updated filing Monday. • U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, President Donald Trump’s top adviser on international trade, advised China-founded fast fashion giant Shein before joining the Trump administration, Wired reported. • Palantir said Monday that first-quarter revenue rose 39% year over year to $884 million, fueled by strong demand from U.S. businesses and government agencies for its data analytics software. Start your day with Applied AI, the newsletter from The Information that uncovers how leading businesses are leveraging AI to automate tasks across the board. Subscribe now for free to get it delivered straight to your inbox twice a week. | 
