Written by: Aarthi Ramnath, Raghav Bikhchandani & Yash Budhwar
The great AI smackdown: It’s getting raw in Washington
The context: OpenAI was founded in 2015 by Elon Musk and Sam Altman as a non-profit with a high-minded mission: to create a machine with the learning and reasoning powers of a human mind—but carefully engineered for the benefit of humanity. In 2018, Musk departed after clashing with Altman over control of the company. The following year, OpenAI launched a for-profit arm which resulted in a civil war and a great exodus of top-tier talent, including OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever. When dust settled, Altman was firmly in charge. OpenAI had raised $17.9 billion across ten rounds at a valuation of $157 billion. But the investor paisa comes with a key condition: OpenAI must become fully for-profit in two years.
Elon is baaack! As OpenAI’s fortunes soared, its former founder became noisily critical. This March, he sued the company for abandoning its non-profit status. He claimed the move was a violation of a ‘Founding Agreement’—which doesn’t exist. And yet Musk has persisted—filing an injunction in November to block OpenAI’s transition to a for-profit biz.
What happened now: Over the weekend, OpenAI responded by publishing emails from 2015 that show Musk advocating a for-profit structure. Haw. Altman’s argument is that Musk is sulking because he wanted to be CEO of the for-profit arm. Also: Musk wants to bog OpenAI down in legal troubles—while he readies its rival xAI and its chatbot Grok for global domination.
Here comes the Zuck: Look, it’s The Zuck with the steel chair! The real plot twist in the wrestling match is the Meta founder’s entry into the arena—with a letter to California’s attorney general urging him to block OpenAI’s for-profit transition. His argument:
OpenAI should not be allowed to flout the law by taking and reappropriating assets it built as a charity and using them for potentially enormous private gains… If permitted, OpenAI’s restructuring would represent a paradigm shift for technology startups; allowing this restructuring would only entice investors to launch organizations as non-profits, collect hundreds of millions of dollars in tax-free donations to support research and development, and then assume for-profit status as its technology becomes commercially viable.
Why this is astonishing: Zuckerberg and Musk (in)famously loathe each other—to the point of childishness (see: cage fight challenge). So no one was expecting the assist. But like Hollywood enemies, they have been united by the need to protect their AI behind. In the case of Meta: its open source model Llama and its chatbot.
The real trump card: is, of course, Donald Trump. In the end, the winner of the contest will be decided by Agent Orange—probably on a whim while he’s chowing down a Big Mac. And since Trump’s language of love is paisa, both Zuckerberg and Altman have donated $1 million to his inauguration fund (in speedy succession!) But they are hardly alone. Others making the Mar-a-Lago teerth yatra include:
The procession of tech leaders who traveled to hobnob with Mr. Trump face-to-face included Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, and Sergey Brin, a Google founder, who together dined with Mr. Trump on Thursday. Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, shared a meal with Mr. Trump on Friday. And Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, planned to meet with Mr. Trump in the next few days.
They’re coming late to a party—where Trump’s BFF Elon is playing hostess. But, hey, tech bro hopes spring eternal. This is now a race to kiss Trump’s bottom (sorry, we couldn’t resist this one).
Reading list: New York Times is best on the tech industry’s newfound love for Trump. Reuters has the story on Zuckerberg joining the anti-OpenAI bandwagon, while The Verge has the full letter transcript. Business Insider brings in the significance of the Zuck and Elon agreeing on an issue for once.
In more tragic OpenAI news: Former OpenAI researcher-turned-whistleblower Suchir Balaji was found dead in his apartment in San Francisco on November 26. The medical examiner has determined the cause of death to be suicide—he was just 26 years old. What’s significant: just a month earlier, Balaji had spoken out against OpenAI’s practices—in an interview with New York Times, he alleged that the company broke copyright law, because its AI models “learn” from data by completely copying it. He provided more context to his whistleblowing in his last ever social media post, which you can read here. (BBC News)
Farewell, Zakir Hussain
After a series of false alarms and denials from relatives, we finally received confirmation of the tabla maestro’s death this morning. He passed away in a San Francisco hospital. He was 73 years old—a three-time Grammy winner and Padma Vibhushan honoree. Hussain’s demise is yet another marker of the end of a legendary generation of musicians. The Telegraph has details of his passing.
Here’s an exhilarating taste of his brilliance:
You can listen to ‘Pashto’ here—his Grammy-winning collab with Béla Fleck and Edgar Meyer. Hussain’s fame in the West was made possible by an earlier generation of legends—including his father Allah Rakha. Below is the iconic performance of Ravi Shankar and his father—at the Monterey festival in 1967—which opened the door for Hussain and others. Also in this older Hindu piece, Hussain speaks movingly of his relationship with his father-guru. Sadly, the tributes to his career as of publishing are crap.
Get ready for the next Apple avatar: Foldables!
Under pressure from dipping revenues from ho-hum iPhones, Apple is reportedly readying for a big leap—to thinner, foldable devices. These will include a skinnier phone that is cheaper than Pro—with a less fancy camera. But more notably:
A larger device, intended to serve as a laptop, would have a screen that unfolds to be nearly as large as some desktop monitors, at about 19 inches. A smaller model would unfold to a display size that would be larger than an iPhone 16 Pro Max, intended to serve as a foldable iPhone.
Some industry analysts grandly declare: “The iPhone 16 will be the last of the boring aesthetic phones.” Hmm, where have we heard that one before?
A timely reminder: The market for foldables is tricky. They will account for only 1.5% of global smartphone sales in 2024—with shipments declining for the first time this year. Competitors like Samsung and Huawei are already struggling to make foldables thin, durable, and affordable. (Wall Street Journal, gift link)
Speaking of Apple: The company’s much touted Apple Intelligence feature summarised a BBC headline so poorly it falsely claimed that Luigi Mangione—the vigilante killer of the UnitedHealthCare CEO—shot himself. (Gizmodo)
Choose your poison: death by heat or pollution?
An Australian study shows that the world is not heating up uniformly—with some regions getting way hotter than others. The surprising reason: air pollution—because aerosol particles in the air reflect the sunlight and temporarily cool the area. So, polluted and densely populated megacities like Cairo and Mumbai, are warming slower than urban centers in Europe and North America.
Why this matters: We now face an atrocious paradox: “As countries develop economically, their governments tend to adopt policies to clean up pollution, and as the air clears, vulnerable populations will be at a high risk of dangerous heat exposure.” (Gizmodo)
what caught our eye
business & tech
- After months of heading for the doors, foreign investors finally made a roaring comeback to India’s stock markets in the first half of December—with a net investment of Rs 22,766 crore (Rs 227 billion).
- Say hello to Phi-4, Microsoft’s newest AI small language model (SLM)—primarily aimed at tackling math problems and complex reasoning.
- TechCrunch has a very useful explainer on what AI ‘world models’ are, and why they matter.
- In alarming AI news, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siematkowski says that his firm stopped hiring a year ago because “Ai can already do all of the jobs” humans can. Just last week, Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma predicted that startups that don’t replace their employees with tech will fail.
- Mattel’s Hot Wheels are still selling like hot cakes—and are now worth a fortune!
sports & entertainment
- British musician Sheku Kanneh-Mason was forced to cancel his concert in Toronto because the airline denied his pre-booked seat for his beloved cello.
- Amid the glut of franchise cricket leagues, the Indian Street Premier League (ISPL) has inked a three-year broadcasting deal with JioStar ahead of its second season. FYI: the ISPL is a tennis ball-based league that features super weird rules straight out of gully cricket.
- The 2025 Women’s Premier League (WPL) auction took place on Sunday and uncapped players made a splash—Simran Shaikh, G Kamilini and Prema Rawat attracted over Rs 1 crore (Rs 10 million) each!
- ‘Pushpa 2’ surged to Rs 8.2 billion net in India and Rs 11.9 billion gross worldwide, becoming 2024’s highest-grossing Indian film and the fastest to cross Rs 10 billion globally.
as for the rest
- Israel strikes Syria—even as PM Netanyahu approves a plan to expand Golan Heights settlements. Unsurprisingly, none of the Syrian leaders have any appetite for a fight.
- The same Syrian leaders have agreed to dismantle Kurdish forces operating in northern Syria…according to Turkey—which has a long history of exterminating Kurds.
- Footballer-turned-righwing politician Mikheil Kavelashvili has been elected unopposed as Georgia’s new president. We explained the protests in Georgia regarding the rigged national election in this Big Story.
- An update on the Atul Subhash suicide case—his estranged wife, as well as her mother and brother, have been arrested by Bengaluru police for alleged abetment to suicide.
- ABC News has agreed to settle a defamation suit against the network and anchor George Stephanopoulos with Trump for $15 million.
- Say hello to India’s first diabetes biobank—set up in Chennai by the Indian Council of Medical Research.
- Another day, another climate change fail—countries failed to come to an agreement on how to respond to drought at COP16 in Riyadh.
- The South Korean parliament has impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol over his bizarre failed attempt to declare martial law earlier this month.
Two things to see
One: Diljit Dosanjh told the audience at his concert in Chandigarh that he won’t perform in India again unless authorities stop harassing him. After all, no one gives him a hard time for singing about Patiala pegs in the rest of the world.
Two: And the winner of the Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards 2024 is… ‘Stuck Squirrel’ by Milko Marchetti. Aww, paavam!
We also adore these smooching owls—captured by an Indian teenager Sarthak Ranganadhan—who won the Junior (below 16) category. It’s kinda like an Indian date (kabab mein haddi included). Check out the excellent winners gallery here. (People)
feel good place
One: Ticketless passengers are the worst.
Two: Best cure for your Monday morning blues: It’s Toto-rific!
Three: Hare vs the tortoise Doggo vs the dolphin
