How strategic venture arms operate

Elon Musk spent the better part of three days on the witness stand this week in his lawsuit against OpenAI, and it's already getting messy. Emails, texts, and his own tweets are surfacing in court, and there are plenty more witnesses to come. Musk's argument against OpenAI? By converting the company to a for-profit model, Sam Altman betrayed the “nonprofit for the benefit of humanity” mission Musk signed up to fund. As Musk keeps reminding the courtroom: “You can't steal a charity.” 

On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec and Sean O'Kane break down what's actually at stake in the courtroom and what to watch for as Altman and others take the stand, plus deals, defense tech, and what Big Tech's earnings week revealed about the limits of the AI spending era.

Listen to the full episode to hear about:

• Why cloud was the winner of earnings week, and what AWS, Google, and Microsoft's numbers say about where enterprise AI spending is actually landing

• The scholarship app founder taking Sallie Mae to court after they acquired his startup…and began selling its student data to ad networks and universities

• BMW i Ventures new $300 million fund with its sights set on AI

• How defense tech startup Scout AI is pitching “military AGI” using vision-language-action (VLA) models

Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.

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