Elon Musk and Sam Altman head to trial over OpenAI's future, and OpenAI ends its exclusive partnership with Microsoft

Elon Musk, an OpenAI co-founder, is suing CEO Sam Altman in a case that could determine whether the company can exist as a for-profit enterprise ahead of its IPO. Musk is seeking $134 billion in damages, the removal of Altman and president Greg Brockman, and the company's restoration to a non-profit, claiming he was deceived into bankrolling the firm.

OpenAI has ended its exclusive partnership with Microsoft. Under the new arrangement, Microsoft will still license OpenAI's technology but no longer exclusively, allowing OpenAI to court rivals such as Amazon.

DeepSeek has priced its new model 97% below OpenAI's GPT-5.5, aiming to attract more enterprises, developers, and agent-based users (autonomous AI systems that can make decisions and take actions).