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      Donald Trump, Seeking Cash Infusion, Meets With Elon Musk

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      It’s not clear whether Mr. Musk will spend any of his billions on the former president’s behalf. If he does, he could erase Mr. Trump’s financial disadvantage in the 2024 race.Donald Trump, who is urgently seeking a cash infusion to aid his presidential campaign, met on Sunday in Palm Beach, Fla., with Elon Musk, one of the world’s richest men, and a few wealthy Republican donors, according to three people briefed on the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private discussion.Mr. Trump and his team are working to find additional major donors to shore up his finances as he heads into an expected general election against President Biden. Mr. Trump has praised Mr. Musk to allies and hopes to have a one-on-one meeting with the billionaire soon, according to a person who has discussed the matter with Mr. Trump.It’s not yet clear whether Mr. Musk plans to spend any of his fortune on Mr. Trump’s behalf. But his recent social media posts suggest he thinks it’s essential that Mr. Biden be defeated in November — and people who have spoken to Mr. Musk privately confirmed that is indeed his view.With a net worth of around $200 billion, according to Forbes, Mr. Musk could decide to throw his weight behind Mr. Trump and potentially, almost single-handedly, erase what is expected to be Mr. Biden and his allies’ huge financial advantage over the former president.Aides to Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment. Mr. Musk did not respond to requests for comment.Mr. Musk has long portrayed himself as independent-minded, and like many business leaders he has donated to candidates from both parties over the years. Unlike other U.S. billionaires, he has not spent heavily on a presidential election, and his donations have been fairly evenly split over the years between Democrats and Republicans. Mr. Musk’s businesses, Tesla and SpaceX, have benefited from federal government contracts and subsidies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Big Questions Raised by Elon Musk’s Lawsuit Against OpenAI

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      Experts say the case against the start-up and its chief executive, Sam Altman, raises unusual legal issues that do not have a clear precedent.From Silicon Valley to Wall Street to Washington, the blockbuster case that Elon Musk filed against OpenAI and its C.E.O., Sam Altman, has become Topic A. It is the business world’s hottest soap opera.But among lawyers, the case has become something of a fascination for a different reason: It poses a series of unique and unusual legal questions without clear precedent. And it remains unclear what would constitute “winning” in a case like this, given that it appears to have been brought out of Musk’s own personal frustration and philosophical differences with Open A.I, a company he helped found and then left.The lawsuit — which pits one of the wealthiest men in the world against the most advanced A.I. company in the world, backed by Microsoft, one the world’s most valuable companies — argues that OpenAI, a nonprofit organization that created a for-profit subsidiary in 2019, breached a contract to operate in the public interest and violated its duties by diverting from its founding purpose of benefiting humanity.Musk’s lawyers — led by Morgan Chu, a partner at Irell & Manella who is known as the “$5 billion man” for his win record — want the court to force OpenAI to open its technology to others and to stop licensing it to Microsoft, which has invested billions in its partnership with the start-up.Among the questions that lawyers and scholars are asking after poring through Musk’s 35-page complaint:Does Musk even have standing to sue? “One of the differences with nonprofits compared to other companies is that, generally, no one other than the state attorney general has standing to sue for the kind of stuff that he’s complaining about, like not following your mission,“ Peter Molk, a professor of law at the University of Florida, said of Musk’s lawsuit. That’s most likely why Musk’s lawyers are presenting the case as a breach of contract instead of attacking the company’s nonprofit status.Musk also alleges that OpenAI has breached its fiduciary duty, but that charge has its own challenges, lawyers said, given that such claims are traditionally handled in Delaware, not California, where the lawsuit was filed. (Musk, of course, has an infamously rocky relationship with the state of Delaware.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Elon Musk’s Feud With OpenAI Goes to Court

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      The tech mogul wants to force the A.I. start-up to reveal its research to the public and prevent it from pursuing profits.Elon Musk, the tech billionaire, has escalated his feud with OpenAI and its C.E.O., Sam Altman.Jonathan Ernst/ReutersMusk takes aim at OpenAI The gloves have really come off in one of the most personal fights in the tech world: Elon Musk has sued OpenAI and its C.E.O., Sam Altman, accusing them of reneging on the start-up’s original purpose of being a nonprofit laboratory for the technology.Yes, Musk has disagreed with Altman for years about the purpose of the organization they co-founded and he is creating a rival artificial intelligence company. But the lawsuit also appears rooted in philosophical differences that go to the heart of who controls a hugely transformative technology — and is backed by one of the wealthiest men on the planet.The backstory: Musk, Altman and others agreed to create OpenAI in 2015 to provide an open-sourced alternative to the likes of Google, which had bought the leading A.I. start-up DeepMind the year before. Musk notes in his suit that OpenAI’s certificate of incorporation states that its work “will benefit the public,” and that it isn’t “organized for the private gain of any person.”Musk poured more than $44 million into OpenAI between 2016 and 2020, and helped hire top talent like the researcher Ilya Sutskever.Altman has moved OpenAI toward commerce, starting with the creation in 2019 of a for-profit subsidiary that would raise money from investors, notably Microsoft. The final straw for Musk came last year, when OpenAI released its GPT-4 A.I. model — but kept its workings hidden from all except itself and Microsoft.“OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft,” Musk’s lawyers write in the complaint.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Rocket Moves Closer to Launch

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      Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket rolled to the launchpad for a series of tests in preparation for its maiden flight later this year.There’s an easy knock against the space dreams of Jeff Bezos and his rocket company, Blue Origin: In its 24th year of existence, the company has yet to launch a single thing to orbit.Blue Origin’s accomplishments to date are modest — a small vehicle known as New Shepard that takes space tourists and experiments on brief suborbital jaunts. By contrast, SpaceX, the rocket company started by the other high-profile space billionaire, Elon Musk, today dominates the launch market.On Wednesday, Blue Origin hopes to change the narrative, holding a coming-out party of sorts for its new big rocket.In the morning, at Launch Complex 36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, the doors to a giant garage opened. The rocket, as tall as a 32-story building, lay horizontally on the trusses of a mobile launch platform.The contraption was sitting on a transport mechanism that resembles several long mechanical centipedes, but with wheels, 288 in all, instead of feet. It began rolling slowly out and up a concrete incline, a quarter-mile trip toward the launchpad.The rocket will undergo at least a week of tests before returning to the garage.“I’m very confident there’s going to be a launch this year,” Dave Limp, the chief executive of Blue Origin, said in an interview. “We’re going to show a lot of progress this year. I think people are going to see how fast we can move.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Terrorists Are Paying for Check Marks on X, Report Says

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      The report shows that X has accepted payments for subscriptions from entities barred from doing business in the United States, a potential violation of sanctions.X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk, is potentially violating U.S. sanctions by accepting payments for subscription accounts from terrorist organizations and other groups barred from doing business in the country, according to a new report.The report, by the Tech Transparency Project, a nonprofit focused on accountability for large technology companies, shows that X, formerly known as Twitter, has taken payments from accounts that include Hezbollah leaders, Houthi groups, and state-run media outlets in Iran and Russia. The subscriptions, which cost $8 a month, offer users a blue check mark — once limited to verified users like celebrities — and better promotion by X’s algorithm, among other perks.The U.S. Treasury Department maintains a list of entities that have been placed under sanctions, and while X’s official terms of service forbid people and organizations on the list to make payments on the platform, the report found 28 accounts that had the blue check mark.“We were surprised to find that X was providing premium services to a wide range of groups the U.S. has sanctioned for terrorism and other activities that harm its national security,” said Katie Paul, the director of the Tech Transparency Project. “It’s yet another sign that X has lost control of its platform.”X and Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment. Mr. Musk has said that he wants X to be a haven for free speech and that he will remove only illegal content.Since Mr. Musk’s acquisition of Twitter in 2022, the company has made drastic changes to the way it does business — in some cases spurning advertising in favor of subscription dollars. It has also restored thousands of barred accounts and rolled back rules that once governed the site.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Super Bowl Could Make Mint for the NFL

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      An overtime classic, featuring appearances by Usher and Taylor Swift, could make this year’s Super Bowl a hugely profitable money-maker for the N.F.L.Did the Taylor Swift effect vault this year’s Super Bowl into the record books?John G Mabanglo/EPA, via ShutterstockThe N.F.L. scores bigIn many ways, the N.F.L. couldn’t have asked for a better outcome for the Super Bowl. It got a thrilling overtime victory that cemented the Kansas City Chiefs as the league’s latest dynasty; a well-reviewed halftime show by Usher; a full roster of pricey ads; and, of course, Taylor Swift in person.It was a powerful reminder of the Super Bowl’s singular perch in America’s cultural landscape, and how that can translate into billions for a juggernaut sports league.The game was a place to see and be seen. Yes, Swift arrived in time from Japan to cheer on her boyfriend, the Chiefs star Travis Kelce. And A-list celebrities like Jay-Z, Beyoncé and LeBron James were spotted at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.Also in attendance were corporate moguls including Elon Musk — who touted a surge in activity on his X social network during the game — Tim Cook of Apple and the Twitter and Block co-founder Jack Dorsey, who was wearing a crypto in-joke T-shirt.The game could set a record. The broadcast, perhaps aided by an army of Swift fans, may surpass the 115 million viewers who tuned in last year, making that the most-watched show in U.S. history. (Viewership for N.F.L. games has rebounded strongly in recent years; the A.F.C. and N.F.C. championship matches on Jan. 28 accounted for nearly 39 percent of national linear TV viewing.)That would help explain why advertisers were still willing to fork over $7 million for a 30-second spot during last night’s broadcast. (More on the ads later.) “In this era of fragmentation, the Super Bowl is what television used to be,” Brad Adgate, a veteran media analyst, told The Times.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Elon Musk Backs Gina Carano’s Disney Suit Over ‘Mandalorian’ Exit

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      Gina Carano accused Disney and Lucasfilm of discrimination when they dropped her after she posted baseless conspiracy theories and right-wing views on social media.Elon Musk poked the Walt Disney Company anew on Tuesday by agreeing to fund a wrongful-termination lawsuit filed by the “Mandalorian” actress Gina Carano.“Please let us know if you would like to join the lawsuit against Disney,” Mr. Musk, seemingly trawling for other plaintiffs, wrote in a post on X, which he bought in 2022.Disney dropped Ms. Carano, a former mixed-martial artist, from “The Mandalorian” in 2021 after she espoused baseless conspiracy theories and right-wing positions, some of which were seen as homophobic and antisemitic, in a series of social media posts. Her character was written out of the series. Lucasfilm, the Disney division that makes “The Mandalorian,” said in a statement at the time that Ms. Carano’s “social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”United Talent Agency also dropped Ms. Carano.Ms. Carano’s suit, filed on Tuesday in federal court in California, seeks a court order forcing Disney and Lucasfilm to weave her “Mandalorian” character back into episodes and recast her for the part. (Employed as a “guest actor,” she was paid $25,000 for each episode in which she appeared.) She is also suing for punitive damages.Mr. Musk has been throwing elbows at Disney and its chief executive, Robert A. Iger, since Disney and X’s other major advertisers, including Apple, paused spending on the platform in mid-November. The advertisers took action after Mr. Musk’s endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory. He seemed especially angry about Disney’s decision to pull ads; other Hollywood companies, in particular, followed Disney’s lead.In internal documents at X, which were seen by The New York Times, sales employees have been notified that Disney has continued to pause advertising on the platform “globally” and “indefinitely.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What Elon Musk Could Lose After His Tesla Pay Deal Is Blocked

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      A Delaware court ruling on his $50 billion compensation plan at Tesla raises questions about corporate governance and more.Elon Musk may be forced to give up a grant of Tesla shares worth over $50 billion.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesThe big stakes of Musk’s outsize pay dealAn unusual pay package that Tesla devised in 2018 helped make Elon Musk the world’s wealthiest individual.But a Delaware judge’s ruling that the arrangement was unfair to other Tesla shareholders raises questions about much more than Musk’s net worth, including control of his companies and his ability to fund them — and how corporate leaders are paid.The backstory: In 2018, Tesla set out 12 milestones tied to market capitalization, revenue and profit targets that Musk needed to reach to qualify for a stock package that is now worth over $50 billion. Experts thought it would be impossible to hit. Yet Musk — who told Andrew at the time that Tesla would hit a $1 trillion market cap within a decade — pulled it off. (He hasn’t taken possession of the shares yet.)Shareholders sued, however, arguing that the plan was devised unfairly, with Musk essentially creating his own pay package with the help of allies on the Tesla board.Those shares are now at risk of disappearing. “The process leading to the approval of Musk’s compensation plan was deeply flawed,” Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick of Delaware’s Court of Chancery (who has been blunt in hearings with Musk before) wrote in her decision, ordering that the contract be voided.There’s a lot at stake:Questions about the Tesla board’s independence are being asked as the car maker’s directors weigh a demand by Musk for more control of the company, lest he start moving highly anticipated A.I. projects to other parts of his business empire.Musk has taken out stock margin loans to finance parts of his business empire. He may find it harder to come up with cash if X needs more money, for example.And corporate governance experts say the ruling is a warning to other business leaders. “It establishes that there is such a thing as excessive compensation,” Sarah Anderson of the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive research group, told The Times.Some legal experts think any Musk appeal faces tough odds. He will probably appeal to the Delaware Supreme Court, they say. But Eric Talley, a professor at Columbia Law School, told DealBook that chancellors like McCormick historically have wide latitude to rule on such punishments.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More