After investing $200 million in Donald Trump’s campaign, Elon Musk was appointed by the latter as Minister of Government Effectiveness for the future American government. Already quick to attack his rivals in the public arena since he acquired the social network Twitter, renamed X, with its 200 million followers, the eccentric boss of Tesla could now attack them through through his new functions. In any case, this is what some big tech bosses fear.
Among them, Sam Altman, the general director of OpenAI. At the end of last week, Elon Musk again asked the American justice system to prevent the parent company of ChatGPT from transforming into an entirely for-profit company, according to information published Saturday, November 30 on the website of the chat channel. American television CNBC. “Lawyers representing Musk, his AI startup xAI, and former OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis filed a preliminary injunction against OpenAI on Friday,” according to the reports. “The injunction would also prevent OpenAI from allegedly requiring its investors to refrain from funding competitors, including xAI and others,” it said.
Elon Musk is not his first attempt, since in March he filed a first complaint against OpenAI and its two founders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, whom he then accused of fraud, conspiracy and false advertising. He later withdrew that complaint, before relaunching it, then expanding it “to include allegations that Microsoft and OpenAI violated antitrust laws when the creator of ChatGPT asked investors to agree not to invest in competing companies, including Musk’s latest start-up, xAI,” CNBC said.
Scorched earth policy
This new legal front marks a new stage in the legal dispute between Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. With a big difference, today Elon Musk is the president’s right-hand man, Trump’s “first buddy”, note The Wall Street Journal. In a style very similar to the president-elect, Musk recently also pinned his personal correspondence with Sam Altman to his X account and gave him the nickname “Swindly Sam”. In addition, the daily points out that the man is so close to the American president that this puts his personal rivals, such as Sam Altman, in an unenviable position. “We know he’s PNG”, or persona non grataa person close to the Trump family said, speaking of Altman, reports The Wall Street Journal. The new administration will thus have enormous influence over the regulation of the nascent AI sector, including Musk’s company, xAI.
Musk’s scorched-earth tactics have sparked waves of concern among his long list of rivals, which over the years has included Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook. Bill Gates joined Elon Musk’s enemies list when he made a bet on Tesla stock, saying a surplus of electric cars would drive down the auto company’s price. Tesla boss was so furious he posted an unflattering photo of Bill Gates on X alongside a pregnant man emoji, writing “in case you need to lose an erection quickly,” says The Wall Street Journal. While the Facebook boss incurred the wrath of the billionaire when Meta, the parent company, launched the Threads application, similar to X.
His favored companies?
“Musk’s influence on the federal government is both extraordinary and extraordinarily lucrative,” noted recently The New York Times. With SpaceX has racked up more than $15 billion in federal contracts over the past decade. While, in 2023 alone, Elon Musk has signed “nearly 100 different contracts with 17 federal agencies” for a total amount of “3 billion dollars”. Some of which are currently carrying out investigations into his companies, and could thus be prevented since they are now under the billionaire’s yoke.
Still according to the Wall Street Journalauto company officials and advisers say they are closely monitoring how the Trump administration might favor Tesla. Elon Musk said he supports canceling the $7,500 federal credit on electric vehicle purchases, which he says will hurt Tesla but will hurt its competitors more. Other Trump policies, such as tariffs on Mexican products, could also hurt Tesla’s competitors, many of which make cars in Mexico for export to the United States. Executives at Facebook and Alphabet (Google’s parent company) are concerned that Elon Musk could push to regulate their companies more aggressively, giving them additional antitrust attention, some of their people told the daily.
Especially since some of Musk’s rivals are not necessarily favored by Donald Trump. The new president thus described Mark Zuckerberg as “Zuckerschmuck” (Zuckerberg the imbecile, in French) and Facebook as an enemy of the people, and nicknamed Jeff Bezos “Jeff Bozo”, denouncing Amazon’s monopoly.