A day after Elon Musk lost his lawsuit that threatened OpenAI’s structure, leadership, and finances, the AI giant is ready to move forward with its initial public offering, sources told the Wall Street Journal.

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman reportedly hopes that his company will be ready to go public by September. The ChatGPT maker has been working with tech IPO powerhouse bankers Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, and may file IPO paperwork confidentially with regulators within days or weeks, per the WSJ.

The news of OpenAI’s potential IPO, which by all accounts should be a blockbuster, comes as the world awaits the public disclosure of SpaceX’s IPO filings, which are expected to appear as soon as Wednesday, according to reports. Rocket-maker SpaceX is, of course, now one of OpenAI’s major competitors, after it consumed Elon Musk’s model maker, xAI.

Now that Musk failed to skewer OpenAI, the competitor he co-founded, through the heart with a lawsuit, it looks like the next Musk vs. Altman battle will take place in the world of finance. Which one will be the bigger IPO?

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The jury’s speedy decision to reject Elon Musk’s lawsuit against the other founders of OpenAI and Microsoft confirmed what we saw in the courtroom: Musk’s case was a weak one, in part because he waited so long to file it.

Watching the closing arguments last week, OpenAI’s attorneys detailed point by point how the law was on their client’s side, while the plaintiff’s team focused on Sam Altman’s apparent lack of credibility and expressed disbelief that anyone would disagree with Musk’s accusations.

The final effect was that, after the verdict, some found it hard to believe Musk had lost — including the man himself. In a post he later deleted, Musk called Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers a “terrible activist Oakland judge,” then announced his plans to appeal, declaring, “There is no question to anyone following the case in detail that Altman & Brockman did in fact enrich themselves by stealing a charity.”

But Altman and Brockman weren’t the only figures who benefited from OpenAI’s non-profit investments. As much as Musk and his legal team tried to make the trial about Altman, the proceedings revealed just as much about Musk.

One incident that came out in court showed Musk benefiting from OpenAI in an uncomfortably familiar way. Greg Brockman testified that in 2017, Musk asked him to bring a team of OpenAI researchers down to Tesla’s headquarters to help with the autopilot team for a few weeks. “It was pretty clear that was not something we could say no to,” Brockman said.

Brockman described taking a team of leading scientists, including Andrej Karpathy, Ilya Sutskever, and Scott Gray, to consult with the “demoralized” Tesla workers. They helped come up with ideas to improve the vehicle’s self-driving technology, with Sutskever telling the team that if they could find 10,000 images of a tricky corner case, they would be able to fix their software. Musk even asked Brockman to recommend employees to fire, which he declined to do.

Another person familiar with the episode confirmed Brockman’s account and said Tesla did not reimburse OpenAI for the time and effort of its employees. Musk’s family office, Excession, didn’t reply to a request for comment.

The heart of Musk’s case is that Altman, Brockman, and OpenAI committed a “breach of charitable trust” — that Musk donated funds for a specific charitable purpose, and his co-founders instead used them for something else. He also accused them of “unjust enrichment” due to stock and other benefits from OpenAI’s for-profit.

In the case of the OpenAI scientists parachuting into Tesla, Musk’s charitable donations were intended to hire scientists focused on securing the benefits of AGI. Instead, he had them work for free at his for-profit company.

Dorothy Lund, a Columbia Law School professor and the co-host of the Beyond Unprecedented podcast, told TechCrunch that this arrangement wouldn’t be legal, calling it “a bit rich for Musk to be suing for breach of a charitable trust, when he appears to have been redirecting assets in a way that was inconsistent with that mission.”

It’s true that the self-driving work involved artificial intelligence, but witnesses for Musk emphasized that Tesla’s self-driving project was very different from OpenAI’s research agenda. That’s in part because Karpathy left OpenAI for Tesla shortly after this incident. OpenAI’s attorneys portrayed the departure as Musk violating his duty to the lab, where he was co-chair of the board, by recruiting one of its key researchers to his own company.

The other fact that no doubt influenced the jury was the amount of time Musk spent trying to gain sole control of a potential OpenAI for-profit affiliate in 2017. Musk deployed good cop, bad cop tactics in an attempt to convince his co-founders to let him have total control of OpenAI’s for-profit affiliate — giving them free Teslas and threatening to withhold his donations.

His efforts put his attorneys in a tricky spot, facing a need to convince the jury there was a significant difference between what Musk envisioned and the for-profit that was ultimately created. They suggested a “small adjunct” for-profit would be permissible, though OpenAI’s witnesses showed non-profits with large commercial arms are common.

Indeed, there’s a very plausible counter-factual where Musk took one of the offers his co-founders made to split their equity more evenly, and finds himself today as one of OpenAI’s largest shareholders — just not the controlling one. But several times during the trial, Musk’s associates testified that he refuses to invest in any business he could have sole control over.

The failure of Musk’s claims because he filed them too late has been cited as a technicality, but the statute of limitations has substance behind it: People and businesses make important decisions and spend resources based on their understanding that what they are doing is permissible. If someone like Musk waits too long to sue, then the cost of unraveling all those decisions can outweigh a just reimbursement.

No members of the jury have spoken about how they arrived at their verdict. However, they were asked to consider if, before August 5, 2021, Musk should have known that OpenAI was spending resources outside its mission or launching a for-profit affiliate. The answer to that is clear: Musk himself was doing those things.

Ahead of Meta’s latest round of mass layoffs tomorrow, some employees are deserting offices, abandoning their work, and loading up on perks they might soon lose, several people at the company tell WIRED.

Two employees describe a widespread rush to use up an annual $2,000 flexible benefit, which can cover a variety of expenses including health and wellness activities. A separate triennial credit of $200 toward the purchase of audio gear has led to a scramble to purchase Apple AirPods and other headphones. Another source says Meta offices have been largely empty this week, as people prioritize polishing their résumés and gather offsite to commiserate with friends for what may be their final time as colleagues. Employees are variously “paralyzed,” “coasting,” and “panicked,” sources say.

Meta plans to lay off about 10 percent of its nearly 80,000 employees on Wednesday, with notices going out to affected workers’ personal and corporate email addresses at 4 am Singapore, London, or San Francisco time depending on their location, according to a company-wide memo sent on Monday. The cuts are coming at a time when the social media giant behind Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook is enjoying record-high profits.

But CEO Mark Zuckerberg insists that the company must free up cash to invest in AI data centers, and that Meta can perform just as well with fewer employees because of AI technologies that augment human labor.

Meta didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment for this story. The company has undergone three previous large rounds of layoffs since 2022, including as part of Meta’s one-time “year of efficiency” drive in 2023. But even though the latest round is smaller than a couple of those, it is drawing widespread scrutiny because it comes at a time of societal anxiety about AI’s impact on jobs.

Inside Meta, the imminent cuts are among several concerns that have sunk morale to unprecedented depths, according to 16 current and former employees who recently spoke to WIRED. Employees also have been frustrated by being “drafted” onto a new AI team without any choice and the rollout of surveillance software that tracks US workers’ laptop use to train AI models.

Meta also plans to internally restructure as it conducts sweeping layoffs, transferring 7,000 remaining staff to “AI initiatives” and converting more managers into individual contributors. That would bring the total number of those affected—either laid off or placed in a new role—to 20 percent of the current workforce, Reuters reported on Monday. WIRED independently confirmed this reporting. Some parts of the company have been told they won’t be affected at all.

But in recent days, employees who are bracing for changes have shared checklists internally about benefits to take advantage of, and are saving documents such as performance reviews and pay stubs, according to one worker. Some teams are meeting up at bars and restaurants near Meta offices in New York and Menlo Park on Tuesday and Wednesday to eat and drink away their sorrows, several employees said. Management has encouraged employees not to come into offices on Wednesday.

Update, May 19, 11:40 PM EDT: WIRED corrected the time zones when layoff notices will be emailed.

Introducing OpenAI for Singapore

Today at the ATx Summit in Singapore, we’re launching OpenAI for Singapore, a partnership with the Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI) to support Singapore’s National AI strategy.

Singapore is a global leader in AI and has made it central to its plans for economic growth, public services, and how people learn, work, and build. It recognised early that AI is becoming core infrastructure for economies and societies, with the potential to drive greater productivity, creativity, scientific progress, and economic opportunity.

As intelligence becomes more like a utility, OpenAI for Singapore is designed to support Singapore’s ambition to become an AI-powered economy. Backed by a commitment of more than S$300 million, the initiative will focus on three key areas:

- Helping organisations in Singapore deploy frontier AI and solve some of their hardest problems

- Developing the next generation of AI talent locally

- Helping more people and businesses across Singapore benefit from AI

“We’re excited to partner with Singapore as it builds on its position as a global leader in AI. Singapore has strong technical talent, trusted institutions, and a clear ambition to use AI to drive long-term growth and improve people’s lives. Through OpenAI for Singapore, we want to help more organisations benefit from frontier AI, support the next generation of local AI talent, and widen access to these tools across the country.”

At the centre of the partnership is the establishment of our Applied AI Lab in Singapore, OpenAI’s first outside the United States. What this means in practice is that OpenAI will create more than 200 Singapore-based technical roles over the next few years and make Singapore one of its global hubs for Forward-Deployed Engineers.

Forward-Deployed Engineers sit at the point where frontier research meets real-world deployment. They work directly with companies on some of their hardest problems and unlock new sources of value.

Through the partnership, the Lab will support work aligned with Singapore’s AI Mission priorities, particularly in areas such as public service, finance, healthcare and digital infrastructure. As this work grows and our Singapore-based team expands, we also expect to increase our office footprint in the country over time.

“With AI reshaping economies, businesses and the workforce, Singapore's response has been deliberate: growing new sectors, anchoring global frontier companies here, and equipping our people with the skills to thrive in this new environment. This partnership with OpenAI reflects the Government’s commitment to developing Singapore's AI capabilities, strengthening enterprise adoption of AI, and securing good jobs for Singaporeans.”

“We are delighted by OpenAI’s decision to expand its applied AI engineering capabilities in Singapore through the launch of OpenAI for Singapore. This investment presents exciting opportunities for Singaporeans and underscores Singapore’s growing role as a trusted global hub for AI innovation and development in the region. We look forward to partnering with OpenAI to support AI adoption across Singapore’s economy through these capabilities.”

Through OpenAI for Singapore, we will work with government and local ecosystem partners to build the skills Singapore will need for a future shaped by AI. This includes:

- Working with the Ministry of Education and GovTech on AI-enabled learning use cases and tools, including more interactive support for Mother Tongue language learning

- Supporting educators through a Singapore chapter of the OpenAI Academy and Codex for Teachers hackathons

- Launching a Forward-Deployed Engineer training programme to help develop local AI deployment talent

- Participating in the National AI Impact Programme to deepen AI capabilities across the technology workforce, including through the use of Codex

Taken together, these efforts are intended to help build the skills Singapore will need for the next phase of AI adoption.

AI’s benefits should reach every layer of the economy, not only the biggest enterprises or the people building the technology.

Through OpenAI for Singapore, we will work with local partners to help more people and businesses across the economy benefit from AI. This includes exploring accelerator programmes for AI-native startups and collaborating on workshops for micro-entrepreneurs and small businesses.

These efforts will focus on practical adoption, helping founders build with AI and SMEs improve operations and customer service.

OpenAI for Singapore is about people as much as technology. By investing in frontier deployment, next-generation AI talent, and access across the economy, we want to be a long-term partner as Singapore builds toward an AI-ready economy in ways that are useful, responsible, and broadly beneficial.