ExclusiveElon Musk LOSES But WINS? The High-profile OpenAI Trial

And many people testified, I think at least four were saying that Sam Altman was a liar. They said he would say one thing to one person and then something else to another. I think even if the trial didn't end up as a win for Elon Musk, it kind of exposes or it kind of sheds light more about open AI. Welcome back to Silicon Valley Front Row. I'm David Lam and this is Steve Ispas. Let's talk about the Elon Musk versus Altman trial. So Steve, this is the case that a lot of people were looking at, you know, very big companies. It ended up being decided that Elon Musk filed the lawsuit too late, according to the jury and the judge. Yeah. What was your first reaction when you heard about that? Well, it was such a kind of important case in so many ways. You had at least four multi-billionaires at the trial because the Microsoft person was there. They got dragged into it. Yeah. So it's a huge concentration of power. Exactly. Wow. I didn't think much of it, but there's a quote here from Elon Musk after the decision. He's saying that the judge and jury never actually ruled on the merit of the case, just the calendar technicality. There's no question to anyone following the case in detail that Altman and Brockman didn't in fact themselves get the rich by stealing of charity. So, yeah, it's kind of interesting. It's just technicality, I guess. Yeah. It was the fact that he filed too late. Yeah. The jury said because of the statute of limitations, it barred all of Musk's claims. So you know what this reminds me of? It reminds me of doing a smog check about a year ago. I don't know if you know this for our audience who's not in California. In California, we have to do smog checks because that's the law to save the planet or whatever. So everyone has to do a smog check and if the car doesn't pass the smog check, then you have to fix it or whatever at a different location usually. It's not the place where you do the smog check for pollution. So I did this smog check and there's a little trick that I kind of found out later is that if the check engine light is on, it automatically fails. Like the guy, he doesn't even need to do anything. Check engine light is on, it's failed. I have to fix that, right? Okay. So I took the car to the smog check and that he did it. He charged me like whatever, $80 and he says it failed. And I'm like, oh man, why did it fail? The check engine light was on. And then I said, well, then why would you do all the work? So he said, oh, I'll give you a discount next time you'll come. But anyway, so just because the light was on, it failed. So it's almost the same kind of thing. It's like, it doesn't really matter what happened with the test at all. The light being on for whatever reason, it fails. Is it automatic? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you would think he saw it first, right? When he was doing the test? Yeah, well, obviously he's trying to kind of make more money because, you know, yeah. But yeah, you would think because he knows that once that's a red light, then it's not gonna pass. So I guess if he stopped you in the first place, you might not have came back to him. Yeah. He did the test and said, hey, you could fix it and come back to me. Yeah, exactly. Give you a discount. But I wonder with the case, why would they even go forward with it if that was the case? Because, you know, it's obvious everyone knew that this is limitation. Well, I think that's the very interesting part. Do you think Elon Musk, in a way, wanted to have Sam Altman, Greg Brockman speak, testified and show kind of evidence of about the correspondence text messages? Because without the case, the messages wouldn't be revealed. You know, that's a really good point. I didn't think about that. But that sounds like a very possible theory because, yeah, he probably knew. And the whole thing seems a little bizarre that he's doing this just to prove that they wanted to enrich themselves. But yeah, maybe it had to do with exposing things. But was there anything exposed, you feel, that was important? Because I didn't follow all the details. I was following it for about a few weeks. So first is like Siobhan Zillis. So they have kids, Elon Musk and her, they have kids together. And then they had like a relationship, but then they had to leave. She had to leave her position at OpenAI because, I guess, conflict of interest. But you learn about the tech executives, too. Like Greg Brockman had a diary or journal. And you could hear about his thoughts and what he thought about the process of OpenAI. And many people testified, I think at least four were saying that Sam Altman was a liar. They said he would say one thing to one person and then something else to another. But Sam Altman says he doesn't agree with that description of himself. Yeah. You know, so I think even if the trial didn't end up as a win for Elon Musk, it kind of exposes or it kind of sheds light more about OpenAI. Very interesting. It could be. Yeah, we'll have to see how that plays out and if it makes any difference in the future. But I don't think Elon Musk needs to be sorry for long, because he's very soon going to take his SpaceX company to an IPO, which by all means seems to be the largest, I think is the largest private company in the world. I think that's what I read too. So, oh, actually a little bit about the trial. Elon Musk says he's planning to file an appeal. Yeah. Yeah, I saw that. I saw that. Maybe it would be a round two. Now, do you think the appeal is going to go to a different, to a higher court? I believe he said through the Ninth Circuit. Oh, yeah, yeah. Which is a higher court. But anyway, so what do you know about the IPO? Yeah, so Bloomberg News said $2 trillion valuation for SpaceX. Expected, right? I guess, yeah, the estimation, yeah. And, you know, one thing to look out for is apparently SpaceX could be on the NASDAQ for listing and could be on the NASDAQ 100 in that case. So it could just make a lot of people a lot richer. So here's what's amazing with that. You have a company that's just going IPO. If it's going to be a $2 trillion, it's going to end up being the sixth largest evaluation company in the world, not in the US, in the world. The ranking right now is NVIDIA number one, 4.7. Alphabet, which is Google, 4. Apple, 3.8. Microsoft, 2.9. Amazon, 2.6. And after that would be TSMC with 1.9. So with $2 trillion, that would be the sixth largest company. That's pretty amazing. Because usually when you think of a private company, it's like a mom and pop kind of company that's, you know, not public. And to be that big, yeah, it's insane. For the initial IPO. Yeah, because that raises money. So they're going to grow from there. Once the stock, you know, people invest more, it's going to get bigger. It's crazy. So yeah, so I think Elon doesn't have much to worry about for a while. Let me take that back. He probably has a lot to worry about, but not in terms of success or victories. He has a lot going on. Yeah. Lots of companies, you know, to keep him busy. Tesla is pretty big too, right? Oh yeah, Tesla is number 10 on this list. Yeah, Tesla's up there with Meta. Yeah, again, this is worldwide. Not even the U.S. only, wow. We're going to end the episode now. So for our viewers, what do you think about the jury's decision in the Musk-Wildman trial? And specifically, do you think the statute of limitations is applied correct here for three years and he did it after five years? But more importantly, should this trial have even gone forward if they knew that it doesn't technically qualify for the case? And as always, thank you for watching. Have a nice day.