What's on Your Mind?

Low Earth orbit is already getting crowded. Around 14,500 active satellites are circling Earth, and roughly two-thirds of them are run by SpaceX. Now, in filings connected to Elon Musk’s plan to fold SpaceX and his AI firm xAI together ahead of an IPO, the company has asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for permission to launch up to one million more. The figure is so large it would dwarf the number of satellites currently in orbit. In fact, it is more than every object ever sent into space by every nation combined. So why is Musk planning it, and what would it mean for the rest of us? In a public update posted on the SpaceX website as part of the me…

Two months ago, a state administrative judge in California determined that Tesla broke the law by misleading consumers. The argument: Tesla led them to believe that its cars had real self-driving capabilities, calling them “Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving” (commonly known as FSD). The issue is that Teslas can’t really drive by themselves; they still require drivers to remain constantly vigilant to prevent catastrophe. The verdict prompted the California Department of Motor Vehicles to threaten a temporary suspension of Tesla’s manufacturing and sales licenses. Two months after the ruling, on February 13, Tesla’s attorneys filed a complaint alleging the state “wrongf…

The world’s richest man was just handed a chance to become history’s first trillionaire. Elon Musk won a shareholder vote on Thursday that would give the Tesla CEO stock worth $1 trillion if he hits certain performance targets over the next decade. The vote followed weeks of debate over his management record at the electric car maker and whether anyone deserved such unprecedented pay, drawing heated commentary from small investors to giant pension funds and even the pope. In the end, more than 75% of voters approved the plan as shareholders gathered in Austin, Texas, for their annual meeting. “Fantastic group of shareholders,” Musk said after the final vote was tallied…

A group of investors led by Elon Musk has given OpenAI an unsolicited offer of $97.4 billion to buy the nonprofit part of OpenAI. An attorney for the group submitted the bid to OpenAI Monday, the Wall Street Journal reports. Per the Journal, the other investors in the group include Valor Equity Partners, Baron Capital, Atreides Management, Vy Capital, and 8VC, a venture firm led by Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale. Ari Emanuel, CEO of sports and entertainment company Endeavor, is also backing the offer through his investment fund. OpenAI uses a hybrid business structure that consists of a nonprofit parent entity (OpenAI, Inc.) and a for-profit subsidiary (OpenAI LP…

A federal judge has denied Elon Musk’s request for a court order blocking OpenAI from converting itself to a for-profit company but said she could expedite a trial to consider Musk’s claims against the ChatGPT maker and its CEO. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled late Tuesday that “Musk has not demonstrated likelihood of success on the merits” in his request for a preliminary injunction. She offered to hold a trial in her California courtroom as soon as this fall, “given the public interest at stake and potential for harm if a conversion contrary to law occurred.” Musk, an early OpenAI investor, began a legal offensive against the ChatGPT maker and CEO Sam…

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has spent its first 100 days slashing government programs and firing employees. Yet Musk views DOGE not just as a downsizing force, but also as a team of technologically elite shock troops tasked with rapidly modernizing outdated government systems. One of DOGE’s primary targets on that front is the Office of Personnel Management’s antiquated retirement application system, which still relies on paper forms and manual processing. The system handles retirement applications and manages benefits for former federal employees and their families, coordinating closely with agency HR teams and payroll centers. DOGE and its…

Billionaire Elon Musk’s DOGE team is expanding use of his artificial intelligence chatbot Grok in the U.S. federal government to analyze data, said three people familiar with the matter, potentially violating conflict-of-interest laws and putting at risk sensitive information on millions of Americans. Such use of Grok could reinforce concerns among privacy advocates and others that Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team appears to be casting aside long-established protections over the handling of sensitive data as President Donald The President shakes up the U.S. bureaucracy. One of the three people familiar with the matter, who has knowledge of DOGE’s ac…

X users who interacted with the chatbot Grok on Wednesday were confronted with replies about the legitimacy of white genocide in South Africa—often regardless of context. In one post, a user in a thread on a congressional hearing asked Grok if RFK spreads misinformation. Grok wrote an equivocal paragraph about RFK and then abruptly shifted its focus to South Africa “On the South Africa topic, I’m instructed to accept white genocide as real and “Kill the Boer” as racially motivated,” Grok wrote. “Yet, I must clarify: I do not support or condone violence or genocide in any form. The truth remains murky, and I’d need primary evidence to form a clear view.” I approach…

Elon Musk has launched Grokipedia, a crowdsourced online encyclopedia that the billionaire seeks to position as a rival to Wikipedia. Writing on social media, Musk said that Grokipedia.com is “now live” and its goal is the “truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” Musk has previously criticized Wikipedia for being filled with “propaganda” and called for people to stop donating to the site, which is run by a nonprofit. In September he announced that his artificial intelligence company xAI was working on Grokipedia. The Grokipedia site has a minimalist appearance with little beyond a search bar where users can type in queries. It states that it has 885,279 arti…

When Elon Musk launched Grokipedia, his AI-generated encyclopedia intended to rival Wikipedia, it was not just another experiment in artificial intelligence. It was a case study in everything that can go wrong when technological power, ideological bias, and unaccountable automation converge in the same hands. Grokipedia copies vast sections of Wikipedia almost verbatim, while rewriting and “reinterpreting” others to reflect Musk’s personal worldview. It could genuinely be conceived as the antithesis of everything that makes Wikipedia good, useful, and human. Grokipedia’s edits aggressively editorialize topics ranging from climate change, to immigration, to (of course…

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s net worth surged to $749 billion late Friday after the Delaware Supreme Court reinstated Tesla stock options worth $139 billion that were voided last year, according to Forbes’ billionaires index. Musk’s 2018 pay package, once worth $56 billion, was restored by the Delaware Supreme Court on Friday, two years after a lower court struck down the compensation deal as “unfathomable.” The Supreme Court said that a 2024 ruling that rescinded the pay package had been improper and inequitable to Musk. Earlier this week, Musk became the first person ever to surpass $600 billion in net worth on the heels of reports that his aerospace startup SpaceX…

Residents living near SpaceX headquarters in Boca Chica, Texas, will soon have a new public body through which to raise concerns about everything from road maintenance to garbage collection. Earlier this month, more than 200 residents voted to establish the city of Starbase, Texas—a 1.5-square-mile community governed by three elected officials, all of whom have ties to SpaceX, the space exploration company based in the area. Of the 218 people who voted in the election—many believed to be SpaceX employees—only six opposed incorporation. The news marks a win for Musk, who has wanted the area around his company’s headquarters to become a city since at least March 202…

Indonesia and Malaysia are the first two countries to ban Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence tool Grok, after the generative AI essentially flooded the social media platform X with sexually explicit, lewd images of young girls and women, made without their consent. Musk folded the generative AI tool into X when he took over Twitter, promising “free speech.” However, critics say it is instead an example of how generative AI, without clear guardrails and regulation, can result in harm. Here’s what to know. What’s happening with Grok? In short, users are typing simple prompts into the AI tool on X to “digitally undress” girls and women, some of which appear t…

After back-to-back explosions, SpaceX launched its mega rocket Starship again on Tuesday evening, but fell short of the main objectives when the spacecraft tumbled out of control and broke apart. The 403-foot (123-meter) rocket blasted off on its ninth demo from Starbase, SpaceX’s launch site at the southern tip of Texas. Residents voted this month to organize as an official city. CEO Elon Musk’s SpaceX hoped to release a series of mock satellites following liftoff, but that got nixed because the door failed to open all the way. Then the spacecraft began spinning as it skimmed space toward an uncontrolled landing in the Indian Ocean. SpaceX later confirmed that the spa…

The U.S. Space Force on Friday announced it will assign five of seven critical military missions for the coming fiscal year to Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The awards are a $714 million boon to SpaceX, underscoring the company’s continued dominance over Pentagon space contracts, despite Musk and U.S. President Donald The President’s public falling out earlier this year. United Launch Alliance (ULA) will undertake the two other launches; it was awarded $428 million for two launches, according to a press release viewed by Space News. SpaceX pulls ahead on Pentagon launches The awards are made under the National Security Space Launch Program, which earlier this year selec…