The Download: Musk v. Altman, smart glasses for warfare, and Google I/O

This is today’s edition of The Download , our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against OpenAI, which centered on whether the company breached its founding contract as a nonprofit. A jury found that he sued too late, meaning his claims are barred by statutes of limitations.

But the verdict didn’t judge if OpenAI violated its nonprofit mission—only whether Musk brought the case in time. The dispute centers on when OpenAI began shifting toward a for-profit structure. The company argued that signs of a shift were visible as early as 2017, while Musk said he only discovered the change in 2022. Here’s a closer look at the timeline, why Musk lost, and why the fight over OpenAI’s structure may not be over . Join us later today for a subscriber-only Roundtables discussion about what happened in the courtroom and what the verdict means for OpenAI and the larger AI race. Inside Anduril and Meta’s quest to make smart glasses for warfare The defense-tech company Anduril has shared new details about the augmented-reality headset for the military it’s prototyping with Meta, including a vision for ordering drone strikes via eye-tracking and voice commands. Quay Barnett, who leads the effort at Anduril following a career in the Army’s Special Operations Command, says he aims to optimize “the human as a weapons system.” Find out how he plans to do it—and what smart glasses could mean for warfare . When Google opens its doors today for its annual developer conference, I/O, it will do so as a clear third place in the foundation model race. A foundation model’s reputation these days rests largely on its coding capabilities, and for months Google’s coding tools have been outgunned by Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex. But the company still shapes the cutting edge in areas such as AI for science. At I/O this week, it will try to prove it can compete on both fronts. I’m going to be at Mountain View this week to see what goes down.

Key points

• But the verdict didn’t judge if OpenAI violated its nonprofit mission—only whether Musk brought the case in time.
• The dispute centers on when OpenAI began shifting toward a for-profit structure.
• The company argued that signs of a shift were visible as early as 2017, while Musk said he only discovered the change in 2022.
• Here’s a closer look at the timeline, why Musk lost, and why the fight over OpenAI’s structure may not be over .
• Join us later today for a subscriber-only Roundtables discussion about what happened in the courtroom and what the verdict means for OpenAI and the larger AI race.