Elon Musk vs OpenAI and the Met Gala tech takeover
The Times Tech Podcast
Will Morley
4.8 • 676 Ratings
🗓️ 7 May 2026
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Met Gala has been dubbed the “Tech Gala” after a heavy Silicon Valley presence and sponsorship from Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez. But as tech billionaires try to win over culture, Elon Musk’s court battle with OpenAI is exposing the messy origins of the AI boom.
Danny Fortson has been covering the California trial, now in its second week, where OpenAI president Greg Brockman has taken the stand. He and Katie Prescott discuss Big Tech’s cultural rebrand, the courtroom drama, and why companies from Coinbase to Meta are increasingly linking layoffs and restructuring to AI. Plus, Bebo co-founder Michael Birch on relaunching the social network and why he thinks AI could become an existential threat.
Get in touch: techpod@thetimes.co.uk
Producer: Marnie Duke
Executive Producer: Priyanka Deladia
Image: Getty
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Times Tech podcast where every week we unpack how technology is reshaping business, culture and everyday life. |
| 0:13.0 | I'm Katie Prescott covering all things tech here in the city of London. |
| 0:18.0 | And I am Danny Fordson out here in Silicon Valley. |
| 0:21.0 | Where you are living your very best tech journalist life, |
| 0:25.8 | covering the court case to end all court cases, |
| 0:29.4 | which as you know I'm very, very jealous about. |
| 0:31.7 | Yes, yes, which I love. |
| 0:33.8 | But yes, that's right. |
| 0:35.0 | It's the second week of this very high profile court case between |
| 0:39.7 | Elon Musk and Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Open AI, etc. And I have been following it very, very |
| 0:48.1 | closely. I just can't wait to hear everything about it. But tech bros aren't just in the courtroom this week. |
| 0:56.0 | They've been partying hard as well. |
| 0:58.1 | So the Met Gala, that very famous New York party, has been rebranded. |
| 1:03.3 | Dada. |
| 1:04.3 | The Tech Gala. |
| 1:06.4 | Because... |
| 1:07.8 | Womp-blum. |
| 1:09.1 | So many Silicon Valley bosses turned up and there was a huge public backlash |
| 1:15.1 | and various protests in the weeks leading up to it. |
| 1:18.2 | Some of the high-profile techies, including Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, had to skip |
| 1:23.9 | the red carpet, which I would suggest was probably more irritating for their other halves who wanted to show off their dresses than for them. |
| 1:32.2 | I am really disappointed. I wanted to see Mark Zuckerberg show up to the Met Gala with his dorky meta glasses and some kind of ridiculous outfit that he seems to wear these days. |
... |
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