Inside The Billionaire Battle For Control Over The AI Revolution

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Forbes

Business News, Business, News, Entrepreneurship

4.8 • 6 Ratings

🗓️ 13 April 2026

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Forbes Reporter Phoebe Liu sat down to discuss the escalating legal battle between Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman ahead of their upcoming April trial. Liu also discusses the allegations of anti-competitive behavior and the financial pressures facing leading AI firms as they navigate rapid innovation, massive capital requirements, and intense competition for market dominance in the emerging artificial general intelligence sector. 00:00 Origins Of The Altman And Musk Partnership 01:47 OpenAI's Transition From Nonprofit To For Profit 03:10 The Upcoming Trial 05:08 Allegations Of Anti Competitive Behavior And Opposition Research 08:12 Financial Motives Versus The Public Good 10:47 Outlook For AI IPOs And Market Valuations InJanuary, OpenAI’s CEO of applications Fidji Simo defended OpenAI’s spaghetti-at-the-wall product approach—ads, shopping, health, a social network, browser, physical devices, video generation and an App Store-like marketplace—as variations on the same theme. “AI is going to transform everything,” Simo told Forbes at the time. “And so we don’t really think of these as completely separate bets.” But just two months later, OpenAI reversed course on its flashiest initiative yet: its once-viral, beloved-by-some Sora video model and app, and a “landmark” licensing deal with Disney that was set to include a $1 billion equity investment. The retreat points to a strategic shift toward more financial discipline within the company. Facing pressure to build products that actually make money ahead of a potential upcoming IPO — and with rival Anthropic gaining steam — OpenAI has been shedding so-called “side quests” left and right. With $13 billion in 2025 revenue but still deeply unprofitable, the company is now refocusing on areas where demand is already proven: coding and enterprise productivity tools. Every startup pivots if things aren’t working. “We will make some good decisions and some missteps, but we will take feedback and try to fix the missteps very quickly,” CEO Sam Altman wrote in a blog post about Sora in October. But OpenAI’s reversals have felt like whiplash. And with many other projects and deals announced but not yet realized — like an AI hardware product designed by famed Apple designer Jony Ive, whose company OpenAI acquired for more than $6 billion in (mostly unvested) stock, or a secretive social network based on people’s biometrics — it’s not clear which of Altman’s many promises will turn into reality. Here are all the products and deals that OpenAI announced which haven’t lived up to the hype, whether it’s because they’re dead, delayed or still to be determined. Read the full story on Forbes: BY Phoebe Liu https://www.forbes.com/sites/phoebeliu/2026/03/31/openai-graveyard-deals-and-products-havent-happened-openai/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	In a battle of billionaires at the center of the AI revolution, Elon Musk is seeking to have Open AI CEO Sam Altman removed from his role.
0:11.6	Meanwhile, Open AI executives are alleging that Musk and also Meta's Mark Zuckerberg are coordinating attacks against their company.
0:23.1	I'm Maggie McGrath, senior editor at Forbes, and joining us to discuss this issue is my colleague, Forbes reporter, Phoebe Liu.
0:31.4	She covers AI and also the intersection of money in AI.
0:35.4	Phoebe, thank you so much for being here.
0:37.4	Thanks for having me.
0:38.3	So the headlines have been coming fast and furious about Sam Altman, Elon Musk,
0:42.3	Mark Zedberg, Open AI.
0:44.3	But I'd love just to take a step back.
0:46.3	How did we get here?
0:48.3	How did the acrimony begin?
0:50.3	So Sam Altman and Elon Musk have worked together for a very long time.
0:55.0	They've known each other kind of as powerful figures in Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
1:02.0	And Elon Musk was one of the co-founders of Open AI.
1:06.0	This was back in 2015 when the company just started and it was a nonprofit at the time.
1:12.4	So Elon Musk was the largest, I think, funder of the nonprofit in the company's early days.
1:21.3	They were part of a group of several co-founders.
1:23.3	It wasn't just the two of them.
1:25.3	I believe he put in about 40 million into the nonprofit that
1:30.7	helped cede Open AI as a company and spent a lot of time at the company recruiting people.
1:37.0	Depends on who you ask helping run the operations as well. So very involved from the start. However,
1:42.5	because it was a nonprofit, people who donate money
	...

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