{"id":43806,"date":"2026-05-19T10:17:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T10:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/43806\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T10:17:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T10:17:08","slug":"fortune-tech-musk-v-altman-ruling-blackstone-google-jv-sony-playstation-price-hike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/43806\/","title":{"rendered":"Fortune Tech: Musk v. Altman ruling, Blackstone-Google JV, Sony PlayStation price hike"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good morning. Our Workplace Innovation Summit<\/a> begins today in Atlanta, and you better believe that artificial intelligence is on the agenda.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not on the ground this year\u2014Fortune Brainstorm Tech is too close!\u2014but there are several sessions on the agenda<\/a> I\u2019m looking forward to. One offers a data-driven look at the effect of AI on labor markets with execs from Indeed and PepsiCo<\/a>. Another shares what high-innovation teams do differently with Columbia and UMich academics. And one looks at what it\u2019s like to work with humans and AI agents side by side, featuring Glean CEO (and Fortune Brainstorm vet!) Arvind Jain.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s good stuff if you\u2019re into doing good work. Follow along with this livestream<\/a>. \u2014Andrew Nusca<\/p>\n

Want to send thoughts or suggestions to\u00a0Fortune Tech?\u00a0Drop a line\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jury unanimously rejects Musk’s claims against Altman\"OpenAI<\/a>OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in Oakland, California, on May 12, 2026.<\/p>\n

Josh Edelson\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

A jury rejected Elon Musk\u2019s claims against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman after just two hours of deliberation on Monday and three weeks of testimony.<\/p>\n

The nine-person jury did not rule<\/a> on the merits of Musk\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The court agreed with the jury\u2019s determination that Altman and OpenAI were not liable, and therefore claims of breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment are dismissed as untimely.<\/p>\n

Musk\u2019s lawyer said he reserved the \u200bright to appeal, though the judge suggested he may have an uphill battle because the question of whether the statute of limitations ran \u200bout before Musk sued was factual in nature.<\/p>\n

The jury\u2019s rapid, unanimous decision follows a high profile, bitter courtroom battle between two of the tech industry\u2019s most powerful players, and could clear the way for OpenAI to move forward with a highly anticipated initial public stock offering.<\/p>\n

Musk, the world\u2019s 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\u2019s lawsuit has asked for $150 billion in damages to be redirected to a charitable trust and requested an unwinding of OpenAI\u2019s for-profit corporate structure.<\/p>\n

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. \u2014Sharon Goldman<\/p>\n

Blackstone, Google create joint venture with $5 billion<\/p>\n

A new AI cloud company? In this economy?<\/p>\n

Google and Blackstone said Monday<\/a> that they\u2019ll create a new joint venture to leverage Google\u2019s homegrown silicon and take on AI cloud providers like CoreWeave.<\/p>\n

The JV doesn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

It also has a CEO: Benjamin Treynor Sloss, a 22-year Google executive.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s \u201cthe biggest attempt yet by Google to sell and monetize its own chips to external parties,\u201d as the Wall Street Journal notes<\/a>, 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\u2019s own Tensor Processing Units, or TPUs.<\/p>\n

Meta, Anthropic, and OpenAI already lease cloud compute from Google that runs on its custom chips.<\/p>\n

The name of the AI game here is supply and demand. There\u2019s not enough of the former and the latter is reaching never-before-seen heights as every big business jumps on the AI bandwagon.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Blackstone knows this well: The private equity giant has steadily amassed a portfolio of data center operators that it says is the world\u2019s largest. It\u2019s also made key investments in rising AI stars including Anthropic, OpenAI, and\u2026come to think of it, CoreWeave. \u2014AN<\/p>\n

Sony increases price of PlayStation Plus subscriptions<\/p>\n

It\u2019s getting more expensive to be a gamer.<\/p>\n

Hot on the heels of price hikes\u2014then price rollbacks<\/a>\u2014to some of Microsoft\u2019s Xbox GamePass subscriptions, Sony says it will increase<\/a> the price of some PlayStation Plus subscriptions in some regions \u201cdue to ongoing market conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the first Sony price hike this year. In March, Sony bumped the price of its PlayStation 5 console due to \u201ccontinued pressures in the global economic landscape.” A standard issue PS5 now runs $650; when it launched in late 2020, it was $500.<\/p>\n

Consoles are, of course, directly affected by both tariffs and global memory chip shortages\u2014and everything is affected by the record inflation that took hold after the COVID-19 pandemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But gamers are feeling the cost-of-living pain. According to a recent BCG survey<\/a>, more than 75% of gamers said that game prices would affect their purchases, even as new monetization opportunities emerge for publishers. \u2014AN<\/p>\n

More tech<\/p>\n

\u2014The world\u2019s largest utility:<\/a> NextEra\u2019s $67 billion deal to buy Dominion is fit for the Intelligence Age.<\/p>\n

\u2014Will Intel or Qualcomm acquire<\/a> Silicon Valley AI chip designer Tenstorrent?<\/p>\n

\u2014Ahead of a 10% layoff, Meta reassigns 7,000 workers<\/a> to four new units focused on building AI tools.<\/p>\n

\u2014Uber boosts stake in Germany\u2019s Delivery Hero<\/a> to 19.5%, up from 7% in April.<\/p>\n

\u2014FBI seeks nationwide access<\/a> to automated license plate readers.<\/p>\n

\u2014The latest from Benedict Evans:<\/a> Demand grossly outpaces supply, data center construction outpaces offices, LLMs commoditize, AI isn\u2019t yet essential for 80% of users.<\/p>\n

\u2014Japan\u2019s largest bidet maker<\/a>, Toto, is doubling down on AI chips.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Good morning. Our Workplace Innovation Summit begins today in Atlanta, and you better believe that artificial intelligence is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1483,2742,425,17241,26731,140,4210,10639,2005,132,2194,657,1122,13864,2008,157,1340,370,2011,7357,26732,5885,26733],"class_list":["post-43806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-openai","tag-alphabet","tag-blackstone","tag-cloud-computing","tag-delivery-hero","tag-dominion-energy","tag-elon-musk","tag-fbi","tag-fortune-tech","tag-gaming","tag-google","tag-google-cloud","tag-intel","tag-meta","tag-nextera-energy","tag-no-copyright","tag-openai","tag-qualcomm","tag-sam-altman","tag-semiconductors","tag-sony","tag-sony-playstation","tag-uber-technologies","tag-workplace-innovation-summit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}