Business & Tech OpenAI's Feud With Musk Escalates With New Court Filing OpenAI has asked a federal court to get estranged billionaire co-founder Elon Musk to stop publicly bad-mouthing the company — which, they say, is unlawful and is doing harm to the company.
SF News Saturday Links: OpenAI’s Viral Studio Ghibli Generator Takes Dark Turn With White House ICE Meme The White House used ChatGBT's Studio Ghibli generator to create a whimsical image of a real ICE arrest; there's a pronatalist matchmaking conference in Austin this weekend; and Canadian-Asian supermarket, T&T is coming to SF in 2026.
Business & Tech Sam Altman’s Other Startup Reportedly Looking to Lease 60,000 Square Feet In Mission Rock OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has another startup you may not have heard about called World that controversially collects biometric data, and it’s in talks to scoop up a reported two floors of a newly opened office building in Mission Rock.
SF News Medical Examiner's Office Says Autopsy Confirms That OpenAI Whistleblower Died By Suicide SF’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has submitted their autopsy report, and it says the November 26 death of OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji was from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, though this may not satisfy his family who have been convinced otherwise.
Business & Tech Elon Musk Bids to Buy OpenAI for $97.4 Billion, Sam Altman Laughs It Off A team of investors led by Elon Musk put in a bid to buy OpenAI for $97.4 billion, a fraction of the company’s value. OpenAI founder Sam Altman merely responded, “No thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.”
SF News Family of OpenAI Whistleblower Sues SFPD, Demands Access to Investigation Records While the SFPD ruled that the November death of SF engineer and OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji was a suicide, his family has their doubts. And now they’re suing the SFPD for the release of the case’s investigative records.
SF News Day Around the Bay: OpenAI Says DeepSeek May Have Used Their Tech to Build Their AI Model OpenAI says DeepSeek may have improperly harvested data from their tech; a San Mateo man has filed suit against Amazon for secretly tracking customers; and the brother of Oakland rapper Too Short was killed in a shooting this morning.
Business & Tech Parents of OpenAI Whistleblower Don't Believe He Died By Suicide, Order Second Autopsy There is a bit more intrigue around the tragic death late last month of former OpenAI researcher Suchir Balaji, who was found dead in his Lower Haight apartment of an apparent suicide.
Business & Tech OpenAI Whistleblower Found Dead In His SF Apartment Three months after publicly accusing his former employer, OpenAI, of infringing on copyrights when training its AI chatbot, 26-year-old Suchir Balaji was found dead in his Lower Haight apartment.
Business & Tech OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Sucks Up to Trump With $1 Million Inauguration Donation It’s a little awkward for incoming mayor Daniel Lurie that his top transition adviser is now a Donald Trump donor, as AI titan Sam Altman has donated $1 million to the Donald Trump inauguration, obviously hoping to curry favor.
SF Politics Daniel Lurie Names OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to His Mayoral Transition Team San Francisco Mayor-Elect Daniel Lurie named some heavy hitters to his transition team in a Monday morning announcement, and the heaviest of these hitters is none other than OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Business & Tech OpenAI Raises All-Time Record Largest VC Round Ever, But Still Hemorrhaging Money Like Mad Is it a “success” when your company rakes in an all-time record $6.6 billion venture capital round, but expects to lose nearly that same amount of money this year? Welcome to SF’s new AI economy, where OpenAI just raised the largest VC round of all time.
Business & Tech Some Upheaval at OpenAI as Company Announces Plan to Become a For-Profit Enterprise OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made some public comments at a conference in Italy on Thursday indicating that the company intends to restructure and let go of its nonprofit structure, but he said the departures of several key executives a day earlier were unrelated.
SF Politics President Biden to Host Global AI Safety Summit In San Francisco In November In late November, when, god willing, we will have a new president-elect whose name is not Trump, President Joe Biden will be gathering AI experts together in San Francisco for a global AI safety summit.
SF News Day Around the Bay: Another OpenAI Co-Founder Has Taken Their Leave A cause of death has been revealed in the murder of a 25-year-old woman found in the Santa Cruz Mountains; Contra Costa County recommends masking up again; and one OpenAI co-founder has taken a leave of absence while another has decamped to a competitor.
Business & Tech Elon Musk Flips Out Over Apple's Deal With OpenAI, Threatens to Ban All Apple Devices In his ongoing quest to convince the world that OpenAI is up to no good and that only he can build the world's best and most ethical generative AI models, Elon Musk sounded off on Xitter Monday in the wake of Apple's announcement that it is partnering with OpenAI.
Business & Tech Nvidia Stock Rally Made the Company More Valuable Than Apple This Week, But Government Antitrust Probe Looming Santa Clara-based chipmaker Nvidia briefly toppled Apple as the second most-valuable company in the US after a market rally on Wednesday, but the feds may have Nvidia, Microsoft, and OpenAI in their sights for an antitrust investigation.
Business & Tech Can We Talk About How Creepy and Meta It Is That OpenAI Made a Voice Assistant That Sounds a Lot Like Scarlett Johansson? Did OpenAI think it was cool to try to turn 'Her' into reality with the help of voice actor Scarlett Johansson?
Business & Tech ChatGPT Reportedly Rolling Out a ‘Google Killer’ Search Engine, But Failed to Do So In Underwhelming Monday Demo There are reports that new tech industry darling OpenAI is working on an AI-powered search engine they hope will overtake Google, but the company’s ballyhooed Monday announcement did not show anything that will have Google shaking in their shoes.
Business & Tech Sure Enough, OpenAI Is Considering Allowing Its Tools to Generate Porn The artificial intelligence company OpenAI is considering allowing its tools to “responsibly” create AI-generated NSFW content, though it's hard to imagine users would have many goals other than to create a tidal wave of deepfake pornography.
Business & Tech OpenAI Publishes Old Emails From Musk Showing He Approved For-Profit Venture In its first public response to a lawsuit from Elon Musk, OpenAI has published some emails with Musk showing that he signed off on the company's for-profit structure, and that he tried to claim "absolute control" of the company.
Business & Tech Elon Musk's Falling Out With Sam Altman Turns Into Lawsuit Against OpenAI Elon Musk, who helped to co-found OpenAI nine years ago, is now suing the company and its CEO Sam Altman, arguing that it has abandoned its professed mission to develop AI "for the benefit of humanity broadly."
Business & Tech New York Times Sues OpenAI, Microsoft Over Use of Copyrighted Content In what may prove a pivotal legal moment for the artificial intelligence industry, the New York Times has filed suit against OpenAI over the unauthorized use of years of journalistic content in the training of its generative AI models.
Business & Tech OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Has Coyote Trouble at His $27 Million Russian Hill Mansion Even buying a $27 million home in a tony SF neighborhood will not keep the coyotes off your property, as artificial intelligence mogul Sam Altman admits in an interview with Time magazine that he’s got a coyote that refuses to leave his San Francisco yard.
Business & Tech Sam Altman Back at OpenAI as CEO, Most of Board Gets Replaced A little over four days after being ousted as one of the most highly visible CEOs in the Bay Area tech scene, Sam Altman has been reinstated as the top exec at OpenAI. And the board that ousted him has mostly resigned.
