Good morning. Our Workplace Innovation Summit begins today in Atlanta, and you better believe that artificial intelligence is on the agenda.
I’m not on the ground this year—Fortune Brainstorm Tech is too close!—but there are several sessions on the agenda I’m looking forward to. One offers a data-driven look at the effect of AI on labor markets with execs from Indeed and PepsiCo. Another shares what high-innovation teams do differently with Columbia and UMich academics. And one looks at what it’s like to work with humans and AI agents side by side, featuring Glean CEO (and Fortune Brainstorm vet!) Arvind Jain.
It’s good stuff if you’re into doing good work. Follow along with this livestream. —Andrew Nusca
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Jury unanimously rejects Musk's claims against Altman
A jury rejected Elon Musk’s claims against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman after just two hours of deliberation on Monday and three weeks of testimony.
The nine-person jury did not rule on the merits of Musk’s complaint that OpenAI violated its original nonprofit structure by evolving into a for-profit corporation. It instead said that Musk had not filed his lawsuit within the three-year statute of limitations.
The court agreed with the jury’s determination that Altman and OpenAI were not liable, and therefore claims of breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment are dismissed as untimely.
Musk’s lawyer said he reserved the right to appeal, though the judge suggested he may have an uphill battle because the question of whether the statute of limitations ran out before Musk sued was factual in nature.
The jury’s rapid, unanimous decision follows a high profile, bitter courtroom battle between two of the tech industry’s most powerful players, and could clear the way for OpenAI to move forward with a highly anticipated initial public stock offering.
Musk, the world’s richest person, sued Altman and OpenAI in 2024, alleging they violated their commitment to keep the AI research lab as a nonprofit. Musk helped start OpenAI in 2015 but left the board three years later. Musk’s lawsuit has asked for $150 billion in damages to be redirected to a charitable trust and requested an unwinding of OpenAI’s for-profit corporate structure.
Microsoft, which invested in OpenAI as early as 2019, was also named as a defendant in the suit. The court said that the claim was also dismissed. —Sharon Goldman
Blackstone, Google create joint venture with $5 billion
A new AI cloud company? In this economy?
Google and Blackstone said Monday that they’ll create a new joint venture to leverage Google’s homegrown silicon and take on AI cloud providers like CoreWeave.
The JV doesn’t yet have a name, but it does have a starting price: $5 billion in equity capital from Blackstone, with hope to bring 500 megawatts of capacity online by 2027.
It also has a CEO: Benjamin Treynor Sloss, a 22-year Google executive.
It’s “the biggest attempt yet by Google to sell and monetize its own chips to external parties,” as the Wall Street Journal notes, and will undoubtedly put pressure on chipmakers like Nvidia who supply Google and its peers with high-performance AI chips that could be replaced by Google’s own Tensor Processing Units, or TPUs.
Meta, Anthropic, and OpenAI already lease cloud compute from Google that runs on its custom chips.
The name of the AI game here is supply and demand. There’s not enough of the former and the latter is reaching never-before-seen heights as every big business jumps on the AI bandwagon.
Blackstone knows this well: The private equity giant has steadily amassed a portfolio of data center operators that it says is the world’s largest. It’s also made key investments in rising AI stars including Anthropic, OpenAI, and…come to think of it, CoreWeave. —AN
Sony increases price of PlayStation Plus subscriptions
It’s getting more expensive to be a gamer.
Hot on the heels of price hikes—then price rollbacks—to some of Microsoft’s Xbox GamePass subscriptions, Sony says it will increase the price of some PlayStation Plus subscriptions in some regions “due to ongoing market conditions.”
In the U.S., gamers can expect to see a $1 price increase (to $11) for the one-month Essential tier subscription and a $3 increase (to $28) for a three-month Essential sub. In most markets, the price increases only apply to new or lapsed subscribers.
It’s not the first Sony price hike this year. In March, Sony bumped the price of its PlayStation 5 console due to “continued pressures in the global economic landscape." A standard issue PS5 now runs $650; when it launched in late 2020, it was $500.
Consoles are, of course, directly affected by both tariffs and global memory chip shortages—and everything is affected by the record inflation that took hold after the COVID-19 pandemic.
But gamers are feeling the cost-of-living pain. According to a recent BCG survey, more than 75% of gamers said that game prices would affect their purchases, even as new monetization opportunities emerge for publishers. —AN
More tech
—The world’s largest utility: NextEra’s $67 billion deal to buy Dominion is fit for the Intelligence Age.
—Will Intel or Qualcomm acquire Silicon Valley AI chip designer Tenstorrent?
—Ahead of a 10% layoff, Meta reassigns 7,000 workers to four new units focused on building AI tools.
—Uber boosts stake in Germany’s Delivery Hero to 19.5%, up from 7% in April.
—FBI seeks nationwide access to automated license plate readers.
—The latest from Benedict Evans: Demand grossly outpaces supply, data center construction outpaces offices, LLMs commoditize, AI isn’t yet essential for 80% of users.
—Japan’s largest bidet maker, Toto, is doubling down on AI chips.
