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May 19, 2026
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Supported by
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Happy Tuesday! Elon Musk loses his lawsuit against OpenAI. Meta Platforms is making broader organizational changes along with impending mass layoffs, moving thousands of workers to its new AI groups. Uber increases its stake in Delivery Hero to 19.5%.
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Jurors rejected Elon Musk’s claims against OpenAI, delivering a major victory to CEO Sam Altman in Silicon Valley’s biggest grudge match. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers agreed with the jury’s decision. The nine-member jury’s decision on Monday, following three weeks of testimony and legal arguments, came after just two hours of deliberation. Musk, who co-founded OpenAI with Altman and President Greg Brockman in 2015, had accused them of violating a charitable trust and unjustly enriching themselves when they transformed the AI lab from a charity into a largely for-profit company. He accused Microsoft, an early backer, of aiding and abetting the breach of charitable trust. The jury found, and the judge agreed, that Musk waited too long to bring his lawsuit. OpenAI’s lawyers had argued that Musk already knew—or could have found out—about the actions he claims were unjust by the time he posted on X in 2020 that “OpenAI is essentially captured by Microsoft.” The decision removes significant uncertainties that have clouded OpenAI’s future as it grapples with intensifying competition and prepares for an IPO that could come as soon as this year. Musk had been asking the court to compel OpenAI to unwind a restructuring last year that paved the way for the possible IPO, transfer of billions of dollars from its for-profit arm to its nonprofit and remove Altman from the nonprofit’s board.
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Meta Platforms is making broader organizational changes along with impending mass layoffs to better suit its structure to AI, a top executive told staff on Monday. The owner of Facebook and Instagram plans to detail cuts on Wednesday to about a tenth of its nearly 78,000 employees. As company leaders worked on those plans, many of them “incorporated AI native design principles into their new org structures,” Janelle Gale, Meta’s top human resources official, said in a staff memo about the changes reviewed by The Information. “We believe this will make us more productive and make the work more rewarding,” Gale wrote in the memo. The Information reported last month that Meta was pulling top engineers from across the company into its new Applied AI Engineering, or AAI, division in a push to step up its competitiveness in the AI model arms race. Gale said that AI-enhanced productivity is enabling the company to move a total of more than 7,000 employees into AAI and several other new initiatives, including ones called Agent Transformation Accelerator and Central Analytics, as well as a new enterprise solutions team. Reuters reported earlier on Gale’s memo.
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Uber lifted its stake in Germany-based food delivery firm Delivery Hero to 19.5%, with options to go to 25%, a sign the ride-hailing and delivery firm may be contemplating expanding further in Europe. Uber told a German regulator it “currently…has no intent” of buying more than 30% of Delivery Hero’s shares. The investment cost Uber about $1.8 billion. Uber had spent $300 million to buy a small stake in Delivery Hero in 2024, as part of another deal in which Uber was to buy Delivery Hero’s Foodpanda Taiwan that was blocked by regulators. Uber kept the Delivery Hero stake, however. Delivery Hero’s revenue last year was just a bit smaller than Uber’s food delivery business. Delivery Hero has operations in Europe, parts of Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.
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Chipmaker Analog Devices is in advanced talks to buy startup Empower Semiconductor for about $1.5 billion, in a deal that reflects demand for technology that can manage the intense energy needs of AI chips, The Information reported Monday. A deal could be announced as soon as this Wednesday, when the $200 billion market cap Analog Devices is set to report its quarterly results. The acquisition of the 12-year-old startup would expand Analog Devices’ portfolio of chips that support AI, whose complex workloads require massive amounts of energy.
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Anthropic announced on Monday that it has acquired developer tools startup Stainless, confirming an earlier report from The Information. The model maker did not disclose any terms of the deal, but The Information had previously reported it was in talks to acquire Stainless for at least $300 million. The majority of Stainless’ employees, including its CEO Alex Rattray, are joining Anthropic in the acquisition, said a person with knowledge of the deal. Typically, developers and agents access AI models like Anthropic’s Claude through application programming interfaces. Stainless uses AI to automatically generate a special kind of software—otherwise known as a software development kit—that makes it easier to build applications from the API. Anthropic could use the technology from the acquisition to make its models and APIs easier to use. It’s possible that OpenAI—another Stainless customer and Anthropic’s biggest startup competitor—wouldn’t be able to use Stainless’ tech post-acquisition as well. Stainless has previously raised $35 million in funding from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, The General Partnership and Felicis.
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