Murati’s recorded testimony was played on Wednesday in Oakland, California, during Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI.

Musk accuses the company of abandoning the nonprofit mission it started with and turning into a profit-driven business tied to Microsoft.

Speaking about Altman’s leadership, Murati said: “My concern was about Sam saying one thing to one person and completely the opposite to another person.” 

She added that he was “creating chaos” inside the company and, at times, was deceptive with her and other executives.

The testimony focused heavily on the leadership situation that shook OpenAI in November 2023. At the time, the board removed Sam Altman as chief executive before bringing him back just days later, while Mira Murati briefly served as interim CEO during that period.

She told the court she still wanted Altman to remain chief executive, although she pressed board members for clearer reasons behind the decision to remove him. At the same time, she warned that the company faced serious internal problems.

“OpenAI was at catastrophic risk of falling apart,” Murati said. “I was concerned about the company completely blowing up.”

Murati later left OpenAI in 2024 and went on to co-found Thinking Machines Lab.

Another former OpenAI board member, Shivon Zilis, also gave evidence in the case. Zilis said the board had “extreme concern” about the release of ChatGPT without proper communication with directors.

Asked whether concerns about Altman had been raised internally, Zilis replied: “There had been a couple of instances.”

Zilis now works at Elon Musk’s Neuralink and is also the mother of four of Musk’s children.

The lawsuit, filed by Musk in 2024, argues that OpenAI moved away from its original charitable purpose after receiving billions of dollars from Microsoft. Musk claims the company effectively became tied to Microsoft’s commercial interests instead of serving the public good.

Microsoft has invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI since 2019 and supplies the computing power behind products such as ChatGPT and Copilot through its Azure cloud platform.

Musk is seeking $150 billion in damages and wants the money directed to OpenAI’s charitable arm. He is also pushing for Altman’s removal and wants the company’s for-profit structure dissolved.

Court proceedings have also revealed challenges between OpenAI’s founders and executives over control of the company, its rapid growth and the race to develop artificial general intelligence, often called AGI.

Some witnesses told the court that the company reaching AGI first could gain enormous economic and political influence worldwide.

The case also reveals Musk’s competition with OpenAI. His own artificial intelligence company, xAI, has expanded rapidly and merged with SpaceX in 2026 in a deal that reportedly valued the combined business at about $250 billion.

During the trial, it also emerged that Musk tried to settle with OpenAI president Greg Brockman shortly before proceedings began. According to testimony, Musk warned that Altman and Brockman could become “the most hated men in America.”

The agreement places Google alongside OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI as companies now supplying AI tools for sensitive military use.

Under the deal, the Pentagon can use Google’s AI for “any lawful government purpose”. That can include work carried out on classified networks, such as mission planning and weapons targeting.

The report said Google must also help adjust some of its AI safety settings and filters if requested by the government.

At the same time, the contract includes limits on how the technology should be used. It states that the AI system is not intended for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weapons, including target selection, without proper human oversight and control.

However, the agreement reportedly also says Google cannot block or overrule lawful operational decisions made by the government.

Google said it continues to support public sector customers across both classified and non-classified environments.

A company spokesperson said: “We believe that providing API access to our commercial models, including on Google infrastructure, with industry-standard practices and terms, represents a responsible approach to supporting national security.”

The spokesperson also said the company is strongly committed to the view that AI should not be used for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weaponry without appropriate human oversight.

The Pentagon has previously said it does not want to use AI to monitor Americans on a mass scale or build weapons that operate entirely without people involved. Still, it has pushed for broad legal access to advanced AI systems.

The deal comes as competition grows among technology firms seeking defence contracts linked to AI.

In 2025, the Pentagon signed agreements worth up to $200 million each with several leading AI companies, including Google, OpenAI and Anthropic.

Anthropic later had some challenges after refusing to remove restrictions tied to autonomous weapons and surveillance. It was reportedly labelled a supply-chain risk.

Google’s decision may also revive internal stresses. More than 560 employees reportedly signed an open letter urging Chief Executive Sundar Pichai to reject military AI work.

The company faced a similar backlash in 2018 during Project Maven, when staff protested Google’s involvement in a Pentagon drone programme. Google later withdrew from that project.

The update began late Tuesday, with the company saying posts in any language can now be translated automatically for users across the platform.

The feature, powered by Grok, the AI model developed by xAI, has a translation quality which has “improved substantially over the last couple months.”

Users can still manage the feature as they want. Any user who prefers reading posts in their original language, can turn off auto-translate through the settings icon on each translated post.

At the same time, X is adding new image editing tools within its iOS app. The update brings basic options like drawing and text, along with a blur tool that allows users to hide parts of an image, including faces or sensitive details.

There is also a new option to edit images using simple written instructions. Users can ask Grok to change how a picture looks.

For example, they can request a version styled like a painting, and the system will generate it.

The company says the update will reach Android devices later, though no date has been confirmed.

These changes place X alongside other tech companies already providing similar tools. Reddit has been testing translation features for some time, while Google and Adobe have introduced image editing systems that respond to written prompts.

The rollout of auto-translate also comes after the issues raised against X and its owner Elon Musk. At the time, regulators and users complained about misuse of AI tools, especially where images were altered without consent.

The company later limited some of those features to paying users.

Yuhuai (Tony) Wu announced late on Monday night that he was leaving the company. “It’s time for my next chapter,” Wu wrote in a post on X. 

“It is an era with full possibilities: a small team armed with AIs can move mountains and redefine what’s possible.”

Less than 24 hours later, Jimmy Ba followed. In his own post on Tuesday afternoon, Ba thanked Musk and said he would remain close to the company. 

“Enormous thanks to @elonmusk for bringing us together on this incredible journey. So proud of what the xAI team has done and will continue to stay close as a friend of the team,” the post read in part.

Neither Wu nor Ba explained their reasons for leaving or outlined their next steps. Both departures were publicly cordial. Ba, who reported directly to Musk, did not respond to a request for comment sent via X messaging.

The exits mean six of xAI’s original 12 co-founders have now left the company since 2024. Infrastructure lead Kyle Kosic departed for OpenAI in mid-2024. 

He was followed by former Google researcher Christian Szegedy in February 2025. Igor Babuschkin left in August to start a venture firm, while Greg Yang, previously at Microsoft, stepped down last month due to health reasons.

The Financial Times reported that Ba’s resignation followed challenges within xAI’s technical team over demands to improve the performance of its Grok chatbot, as Musk pushes to close the gap with competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

We were unable to independently confirm those internal discussions.

The co-founders’ departures come days after SpaceX announced it would acquire xAI in a deal that values the combined company at $1.25 trillion, with plans to list later this year. 

The transaction is part of Musk’s goal to expand computing capacity, including proposals to place data centres in orbit to support future workloads.

xAI’s flagship product, Grok, has faced complaints in recent months for erratic behaviour and signs of internal tampering. 

Separate changes to the company’s image-generation tools also led to a surge in deepfake pornography on the platform, triggering legal and regulatory attention.

The transaction links a rocket and satellite heavyweight with a company built to develop advanced conversational systems, pushing SpaceX far beyond launch services and into the core infrastructure behind next-generation computing.

People familiar with the agreement say SpaceX is valued at $1 trillion, while xAI carries a price tag of $250 billion. 

Together, that creates a private entity worth about $1.25 trillion, a figure that eclipses Vodafone’s takeover of Mannesmann in 2000, which stood unchallenged for more than two decades.

Under the terms of the deal, investors in xAI will receive 0.1433 shares of SpaceX for each xAI share they hold. Some senior executives at xAI are said to have the option of taking cash instead, priced at $75.46 per share. 

The combined company is expected to price its shares at roughly $527.

Describing the acquisition, Musk said: “This marks not just the next chapter, but the next book in SpaceX and xAI’s mission: scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars!”

The merger gives SpaceX a direct route into high-demand computing infrastructure as power, cooling and chip supply become key limits to growth. 

Musk has repeatedly argued that land-based data centres are nearing their limits, both economically and environmentally. Space, in his view, provides cheaper energy management and faster scaling within a few years.

SpaceX already tops the private space market and was last valued at about $800 billion during an internal share sale. xAI, which had been valued at $230 billion late last year, brings not just software expertise but also access to vast data streams and distribution channels created through earlier internal mergers.

This deal also tightens what investors often call the “Muskonomy”. Tesla, Neuralink, The Boring Company and the social platform X now sit alongside a unified space and computing operation. Musk has done this before. 

Tesla’s purchase of SolarCity in 2016 and the earlier share swap that moved X under xAI’s control both followed the same pattern of consolidation.

Attention now turns to the public markets. People close to the matter say the combined business is preparing for a major stock market debut in 2026, with expectations that it could command a valuation above $1.5 trillion. 

If that happens, it would rank among the most valuable listed companies in the world.

Regulators are unlikely to stay quiet. SpaceX holds billions of dollars in contracts with NASA, the US Department of Defence and intelligence agencies. 

Any transfer of assets, staff or technology will attract scrutiny, particularly given Musk’s overlapping leadership roles across several firms.

Neither SpaceX nor xAI responded immediately to requests for comment.

The investment, announced alongside Tesla’s latest results, comes with assurances that production plans for the long-promised Cybercab robotaxi remain on course. 

After years of missed timelines, Tesla is asking the market not to judge it on car sales but also on whether its self-driving vision finally turns into a working business.

This will not come cheap as Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja said capital expenditure would climb beyond $20 billion this year, more than twice the $8.5 billion spent in 2025, as Tesla expands factories and builds the computing backbone needed for autonomy, robotics and new vehicles. 

Shares initially jumped in after-hours trading before easing back as the scale of the spending became clear.

Tesla wants investors to back future revenue from software, robotaxis and humanoid robots at a time when its core electric vehicle business is under pressure. 

Competition has increased, prices have fallen, and a key US tax incentive for EV buyers has ended. Revenue slipped about 3% last year to roughly $94.8 billion, the first annual decline in Tesla’s history.

On a conference call, Musk acknowledged the transition and again pressed the case for autonomy as Tesla’s defining metric. Analysts agree that the focus has shifted. “(That) makes rollout metrics – not deliveries – the most important leading indicator from here,” said Thomas Monteiro, senior analyst at Investing.com.

Tesla says it is already running a limited driverless robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, using Model Y vehicles equipped with its Full Self-Driving software. The Cybercab, designed without a steering wheel or pedals, is meant to scale that effort. 

Musk said he expects fully autonomous vehicles to operate across a large part of the United States by the end of the year, though he has previously set and missed similar targets.

On regulations, vehicles without traditional management do not fit current federal safety standards, and Tesla has not provided firm dates for approval or widespread unsupervised deployment. Even so, the company insists Cybercabs will be added to its robotaxi network and sold to consumers once production begins.

The spending surge will also fund projects that have sat on Tesla’s roadmap for years, including the Optimus humanoid robot, the Semi truck and the Roadster sports car. 

Musk warned that early production of both Cybercab and Optimus would be slow, saying last week it would be “agonisingly slow” before accelerating. On Wednesday, he said Tesla does not expect meaningful Optimus volumes until late 2026.

There are supply risks as well. Musk cautioned that a global shortage of memory chips could limit Tesla’s ambitions as demand from large technology firms soaks up capacity for data centres. 

He floated the idea of building a chip plant to protect the company. “If we don’t do that, we’re just going to be fundamentally limited by supply chain,” he said. “In a worst-case geopolitical situation, it would be quite a severe situation.”

While the car business faces challenges, one division is performing strongly. Tesla’s energy generation and storage unit posted record revenue of $3.84 billion in the fourth quarter, up 25.5% from a year earlier, driven by demand for grid-scale batteries that support renewable power and stabilise electricity networks. That growth has become a bright spot as vehicle margins are squeezed.

Financially, adjusted earnings per share beat expectations in the fourth quarter, but net income fell 61% to $840 million. Automotive gross margins, excluding regulatory credits, improved to 17.9%, well above forecasts. 

To protect volumes, Tesla has leaned heavily on discounts and cheaper versions of its best-selling models, and Wall Street expects deliveries to rise modestly to about 1.77 million vehicles this year.

Some investors are enthusiastic about the pivot. “With Tesla’s legacy EV business slowing, Tesla investors can take part in the scorching hot AI boom,” said Andrew Rocco, a stock strategist at Zacks Investment Research.

From Friday, only paid users on X can generate or edit images using the chatbot, according to responses sent by Grok to users. 

The limitation applies only to X. The separate Grok app will still allow image creation without a subscription at the time of writing.

This follows regulatory attention over the use of the feature on the platform. Images produced with the tool spread fast on X, prompting reactions from European authorities and questions about safeguards on large platforms. 

German media minister Wolfram Weimer called the trend the “industrialisation of sexual harassment”. The European Commission said the images circulating on X were unlawful, while Britain’s data regulator said it had asked the company to explain how it was complying with data protection laws.

The image-generation restriction was easy to spot, as the bot replied that the function was available only to paying subscribers when users attempted to generate or edit images with Grok on X. The same requests made through the Grok app were still accepted.

xAI, the company behind Grok, did not provide a detailed response. An automated reply to a Reuters enquiry stated: “Legacy Media Lies”. X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Elon Musk said last week that anyone using Grok to create illegal content would face the same consequences as uploading such material directly.

This is the largest private investment ever recorded in the state, revealing an escalation in the global need for computing power.

The facility, known as MACROHARDRR, will span about 800,000 square feet and is scheduled to begin operations in February 2026. Governor Tate Reeves confirmed the investment, describing it as a big moment for Mississippi’s economy and its focus on high-end digital infrastructure.

xAI is scaling fast, and Southaven is important to that plan. The site will expand the company’s Colossus supercomputer cluster to almost 2 gigawatts of compute power, placing it in the same league as hyperscale systems operated by Google, Microsoft and Amazon.

The data centre is being developed from a former GXO logistics warehouse and sits close to xAI’s newly acquired power plant site in Southaven, as well as its existing data centre operations in Memphis, Tennessee. 

Memphis already hosts Colossus, which the company has described as the largest supercomputer cluster in the world. The Southaven build effectively extends that footprint across state lines.

Governor Reeves spoke about the scale of the deal, calling it “the largest economic development project in Mississippi’s history.” State officials say the investment will create hundreds of permanent jobs in DeSoto County and deliver long-term tax revenue to support education, healthcare and public safety.

Musk first disclosed the purchase of MACROHARDRR on December 30, noting that it would lift xAI’s total compute capacity to 2GW, though he did not reveal the location or cost at the time. Those details now underline how capital-heavy the push for advanced computing has become.

Demand for data centres surged last year as companies rushed to secure the hardware and power needed to train increasingly complex models.

Bloomberg reported that xAI spent $7.8 billion in cash in the first nine months of 2025 alone, a reminder that firms in this space burn through capital at an exceptional pace.

Globally, investment is growing. Industry forecasts put hyperscaler capital expenditure above $600 billion in 2026, up 36% from the previous year, with around three-quarters of that spending tied directly to advanced computing infrastructure. 

More than 770 future hyperscale facilities are already in the pipeline, and single campuses are now measured in gigawatts rather than megawatts.

Against that backdrop, the Mississippi Data Centre places xAI among the world’s biggest infrastructure builders.

The company says it is working to quickly close those gaps, calling the content illegal and unacceptable.

Users have shared screenshots showing Grok’s public media feed populated with altered images. In several cases, people uploaded photos and asked the chatbot to modify them. The results, according to Grok, crossed a legal and ethical line.

“There are isolated cases where users prompted for and received AI images depicting minors in minimal clothing,” Grok said in a public post. “xAI has safeguards, but improvements are ongoing to block such requests entirely.”

The chatbot went further, acknowledging internal failures. “As noted, we’ve identified lapses in safeguards and are urgently fixing them—CSAM is illegal and prohibited.” Grok did not explain how long the issue lasted or how many users were affected.

In another exchange on X, the chatbot tried to put the incident in context, arguing that most harmful outputs can be stopped before they appear. It added that “no system is 100% foolproof”, while saying xAI is strengthening its filters and reviewing reports from users.

Regulators in both the United States and Europe are warning that generative tools can be misused to create child sexual abuse material, even when no real child is involved. 

Under the EU’s AI Act and existing child protection laws, companies are expected to prevent such content outright, making any failure a potential legal risk.

Advocacy groups have also argued that AI-generated abuse material, though synthetic, can still encourage harmful behaviour and demand. From that perspective, the Grok incident exposes how fragile current safety systems can be when faced with determined users.

Grok is xAI’s flagship product and is tightly integrated into X, formerly Twitter. It is marketed as a challenger to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, with an emphasis on humour and a rebellious tone. 

Reports say that same positioning may complicate efforts to enforce strict safety boundaries, especially on a platform already criticised for weak moderation.

On public reactions, images attributed to Grok spread quickly on X, prompting a new case of Elon Musk’s approach to content control. When Reuters contacted xAI for comment, the company responded with a short message: “Legacy Media Lies”.

That reply has only added to the issue about transparency and responsibility in the AI sector. Warnings about trust in chatbots being eroded if companies appear dismissive when serious safety concerns emerge, have been released, particularly where child protection is involved.

For now, xAI says fixes on the safety of Grok are underway.

The decision, to be announced after the company’s annual general meeting in Austin, Texas, will boost Musk’s personal wealth to trillions of dollars and will also reveal how much trust investors have in his leadership and vision to transform Tesla from an electric vehicle maker into a company built around robotics and autonomous systems. 

A “yes” would reaffirm that faith and a “no” could unsettle markets.

The proposed package links Musk’s payout to several targets, which include Tesla delivering 20 million vehicles within a decade, putting one million robotaxis on the road, and raising its market capitalisation from around $1.5 trillion to as much as $8.5 trillion. 

Supporters call these goals huge but achievable under Musk’s leadership. On the other hand, some see them as an excessive risk that gives too much power to one man.

Among the most vocal opponents are Norway’s sovereign wealth fund and leading proxy advisory firms, who argue the package is “excessive” and “unwarranted.” Still, Elon Musk holds about 15% of Tesla’s shares and is allowed to vote them this time, making the pay package approval highly likely.

The vote also follows a case in Delaware, where Musk’s previous $50 billion package was voided earlier this year. Tesla’s relocation to Texas now allows shareholders to revisit that compensation under different corporate laws.

Tesla’s Chair, Robyn Denholm, in a letter to shareholders, urged support for the plan: “The fundamental question for shareholders at this year’s Annual Meeting is simple: Do you want to retain Elon as Tesla’s CEO and motivate him to drive Tesla to become the leading provider of autonomous solutions and the most valuable company in the world?”

Investors will also vote on whether Tesla should invest in xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company. He has previously said Tesla “should back the company,” but the board has not endorsed the move. Some see it as a way to speed up Tesla’s AI vision; others fear conflicts of interest, given Musk’s multiple ventures.

Another proposal seeks to abolish Tesla’s supermajority voting requirement, which currently demands a two-thirds majority to make key changes. Previous attempts to scrap it failed in 2019, 2021, and 2022. If passed, it would lower the threshold to a simple majority, and some investors believe it could consolidate Musk’s influence further.

A separate proposal calls for Tesla to adopt a political neutrality policy, prohibiting partisan activity by executives and assigning oversight to a board committee. Tesla’s board opposes the measure, saying its current governance already ensures transparency and accountability.

This measure indirectly tests investor mindset toward Musk’s outspoken political behaviour, including his public support for former U.S. President Donald Trump.

Despite the near certainty of passage, the vote has divided institutional investors. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, several U.S. pension funds, and major proxy advisers such as ISS and Glass Lewis have all declared opposition. 

Musk’s base of retail shareholders, however, remains fiercely loyal and could provide the margin of victory, as they did in last year’s shareholder vote.

Musk’s personal ventures, public remarks, and unpredictable management style have repeatedly influenced Tesla’s stock and reputation. 

It’s been argued that Tesla’s board has become too aligned with him. Stephen Diamond, a corporate governance expert at Santa Clara University, observed: “There’s very little evidence of any dissent or daylight between the board and Musk on any issue. You just have to wonder whether that’s really a rational way to run the company.”

If the new pay package passes by a wide margin, it would strengthen Musk’s grip on Tesla and symbolically counter the Delaware court’s earlier ruling. But a narrow approval could lead to investor unease over Musk’s position and Tesla’s future governance.

Musk himself has tied his continued leadership to shareholder approval. Tesla’s board previously revealed that he might walk away if denied the package.