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Elon Musk is seeking up to $134bn from OpenAI and Microsoft, arguing he deserves the "wrongful gains" that ‌they received from his early support of the artificial-intelligence ‌startup, according to a ‍court filing on Friday. OpenAI gained between $65.5bn and $109.4bn from the billionaire entrepreneur's contributions ⁠when he was co-founding OpenAI from ⁠2015, while Microsoft gained between $13.3bn and $25.1bn, Musk said in the ‍federal court filing ahead of his trial against the two companies.OpenAI, Microsoft and Musk's lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside business hours. OpenAI has called the lawsuit "baseless" and part of a "harassment" campaign by Musk. A Microsoft lawyer has said there is no evidence that the company "aided and ‌abetted" OpenAI.The two companies challenged Musk's damages claims in a separate filing on Friday.Musk, who left OpenAI in 2018 and now runs xAI ‍with its competitor chatbot Grok, ⁠alleges that ChatGPT ‌operator OpenAI violated its founding mission in a high-profile restructuring to a for-profit entity.A judge in Oakland, California, ruled this month that a jury will hear the trial, expected to start in April.Musk's filing says he contributed about $38mn, 60% of OpenAI's early seed funding, helped recruit staff, connect the founders with key contacts and lend credibility to the project when it was created."Just as an early investor in a startup company may realise gains many orders of magnitude greater ​than the investor's initial investment, ‌the wrongful gains that OpenAI and Microsoft have earned - and which Musk is now ⁠entitled to disgorge - are much ‍larger than Musk's initial contributions," Musk argues.The filing says Musk's contributions to OpenAI and Microsoft were calculated by his expert witness, financial economist C Paul Wazzan.Musk may seek punitive damages and other penalties, including a possible injunction, if the jury finds either company liable, the ​filing says, without specifying what form any injunction might take.In their own filing, OpenAI and Microsoft asked the judge to limit what Musk's expert may present to jurors, arguing his analysis should be excluded as "made up," "unverifiable" and "unprecedented" and as seeking an "implausible" transfer of billions from a nonprofit to a former donor-turned-competitor.The companies also disputed Musk's damages figures more broadly, saying the expert's approach is unreliable ⁠and could mislead the jury. 

OpenAI announced on Friday it will begin testing advertisements on ChatGPT in the coming weeks, as the wildly popular artificial intelligence chatbot seeks to increase revenue to cover its soaring costs.The ads will initially appear in the United States for free and lower-tier subscribers, the company said in a blog post outlining its long-anticipated move into advertising.The integration of advertising has been a key question for generative AI chatbots, with companies largely reluctant to interrupt the user experience with ads.But the exorbitant costs of running AI services may have forced OpenAI's hand.Only a small percentage of its nearly 1bn users pay for subscription services, putting pressure on the company to find new revenue sources.Since ChatGPT's launch in 2022, OpenAI's valuation has soared to $500 billion in funding rounds -- higher than any other private company. Some expect it could go public with a trillion-dollar valuation.But the ChatGPT maker burns through cash at a furious rate, mostly on the powerful computing required to deliver its services.With its move, OpenAI brings its business model closer to tech giants Google and Meta, which have built advertising empires on the back of their free-to-use services.Unlike OpenAI, those companies have massive advertising revenue to fund AI innovation - with Amazon also building a solid ad business on its shopping and video streaming platforms."Ads aren't a distraction from the gen AI race; they're how OpenAI stays in it," said Jeremy Goldman, an analyst at Emarketer."If ChatGPT turns on ads, OpenAI is admitting something simple and consequential: the race isn't just about model quality anymore; it's about monetising attention without poisoning trust," he added.OpenAI's pivot comes as Google gains ground in the generative AI race, infusing services including Gmail, Maps and YouTube with AI features that - in addition to its Gemini chatbot - compete directly with ChatGPT.To address concerns about its pivot into advertising, OpenAI pledged that ads would never influence ChatGPT's answers and that user conversations would remain private from advertisers."Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you," the company stated. "Answers are optimised based on what's most helpful to you. Ads are always separate and clearly labelled."In an apparent reference to Meta, TikTok and Google's YouTube - platforms accused of maximising user engagement to boost ad views - OpenAI said it would "not optimise for time spent in ChatGPT.""We prioritise user trust and user experience over revenue," it added.The commitment to user well-being is a sensitive issue for OpenAI, which has faced accusations of allowing ChatGPT to prioritise emotional engagement over safety, allegedly contributing to mental distress among some users. 

SoftBank Group is racing to close a $22.5bn funding commitment ‌to OpenAI by year-end through an array of cash-raising schemes, including a sale of some investments, and could tap its undrawn ‌margin loans borrowed against its valuable ownership in ‍chip firm Arm Holdings, sources said.The "all-in" bet on OpenAI is among the biggest yet by SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, as the Japanese billionaire seeks to improve his firm's position in the ⁠race for artificial intelligence. To come up with the money, Son ⁠has already sold SoftBank's entire $5.8bn stake in AI chip leader Nvidia, offloaded $4.8bn of its T-Mobile US stake, and slashed staff.Son has slowed ‍most other dealmaking at SoftBank's Vision Fund to a crawl, and any deal above $50mn now requires his explicit approval, two of the sources told Reuters. Son's firm is working to take public its payments app operator, PayPay. The initial public offering, originally expected this month, was pushed back due to the 43-day-long US government shutdown, which ended in November.PayPay's market debut, likely to raise more than $20bn, is now expected in the first quarter of next year, according to one direct source and another person familiar with the efforts.The Japanese conglomerate is also looking to cash out some of its holdings in Didi Global, the operator of China’s dominant ride-hailing platform, which is looking to list its shares ‌in Hong Kong after a regulatory crackdown forced it to delist in the US in 2021, a source with direct knowledge said. Investment managers at SoftBank's Vision Fund are being directed toward the OpenAI deal, two of the above sources said.SoftBank's scramble to marshal funds offers a window into the strain faced even by ‍the world's biggest dealmakers as they scramble to finance ⁠ambitious AI data centre projects ‌worth hundreds of billions of dollars.SoftBank declined to comment.OpenAI has not yet received the remaining funding, but expects the money to come in by the end of 2025, as stipulated in the contract, sources said.SoftBank has multiple sources of capital it could tap, including margin loans, cash on its balance sheet, stakes in listed companies, and corporate bonds or bridge loans, sources said. Son has strong reasons to draw on a range of funding mechanisms to fulfil those obligations.SoftBank secured a deal to invest in OpenAI at a $300bn valuation in April. Since then, the valuation of OpenAI has risen dramatically and the company is in talks to raise additional funding from investors, including Amazon, tripling its valuation to close to $900 billion, one of the sources added, which would give SoftBank a significant paper gain once the transaction is completed.A major pool of capital for SoftBank is its undrawn capacity of margin loans borrowed against its ownership of British semiconductor and software design company Arm Holdings. SoftBank recently expanded its margin loan capacity by $6.5bn, bringing the total undrawn capacity to $11.5bn. Arm’s stock ​has since tripled from its IPO price, providing SoftBank with ‌additional collateral headroom to expand its borrowing capacity.SoftBank reported parent-level cash of 4.2tn yen ($27.16bn) as of September 30. The group still owns about 4% of T-Mobile US, remaining the wireless carrier’s second-largest ⁠shareholder, a stake worth roughly $11bn at the end of September, ‍according to LSEG data. Despite investing at a less active pace, it has continued to back AI startups such as Sierra and Skild AI.Both OpenAI and SoftBank are investors in Stargate, a $500bn initiative to build AI data centres for training and inference that executives say is crucial to the US government's ambitions to keep ahead of China in AI.The rush to build data centres has also prompted tech giants including Meta Platforms to commit unprecedented sums to these buildouts - which need chips, power, cooling, and servers - and they have brought in deep-pocketed partners to spread the risk.Their hefty ​capital outlays have sparked concerns about what happens if the investments fail to bring commensurate returns, raising the spectre of an "AI bubble" bursting. SoftBank promised in April to invest up to $30bn in OpenAI - $10bn of which the startup would receive the same month. The rest of the payment was contingent on the AI startup transitioning to a for-profit corporation by the end of the year, an ambitious feat that OpenAI achieved in October.The new funding is crucial for covering OpenAI’s rising costs to train and run its AI models as competition from Alphabet's Google ratchets up. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told employees recently that the company is now entering a "code red” phase to improve ChatGPT - delaying other product rollouts to fend off the momentum behind Google’s Gemini.In October, Altman said OpenAI aimed to build 30 gigawatts of computing capacity for $1.4tn. He said he ultimately wants OpenAI to add ⁠1 gigawatt of compute every week - an enormous target given that each gigawatt currently comes with a capital cost of more than $40bn. 

OpenAI has announced that it's changing how ChatGPT's Voice mode works on the web and app.The company stated that as part of the update, users can interact with ChatGPT Voice directly within the ongoing chat, allowing users to see the transcript of conversations with OpenAI's AI model, as well as visual elements that illustrate what ChatGPT is talking about.It was added that, with the new update, users can now start a voice conversation by tapping the "sound waves” icon next to the text field. Unlike the previous interface, which relied on a separate design filled with moving circles, Voice mode is now integrated directly into the conversation itself, making it easier to switch between speaking and typing.This integration between visual elements and voice responses comes as a natural extension of ChatGPT’s multimodal capabilities. Users can already issue voice requests supported by images or video clips, and the model’s voice responses provide the same level of visual integration.

Chinese tech giant Alibaba reported a quarterly revenue bump on Tuesday, after shares rose on the blockbuster launch of a new artificial intelligence app downloaded more than 10mn times in a week.Analysts said the early success of the company's redesigned Qwen app positions it as a potential competitor to Chinese rival DeepSeek and OpenAI's ChatGPT.Alibaba said on Tuesday revenue in the three months ending September 30 totalled 247.8bn yuan ($35bn).That was a 5% jump on the 236.5bn yuan logged in the same quarter last year and beat analyst estimates of 245.2bn yuan."We have entered into an investment phase to build long-term strategic value in AI technologies and infrastructure," said Eddie Wu, Alibaba's chief executive officer."Robust AI demand further accelerated our Cloud Intelligence Group business, with revenue up 34 % and AI-related product revenue achieving triple-digit year-over-year growth for the ninth consecutive quarter," Wu said.Net income attributable to ordinary shareholders for the quarter fell to 21bn yuan, down 52% on-year, the company said.Alibaba runs some of China's biggest online shopping platforms and wants to become a major player in the global race to develop AI technology.The Hangzhou-based company said in February it would spend at least 380bn yuan ($53bn) on artificial intelligence and cloud computing over the next three years.Wu said in September the company plans to increase that spending further.This approach has seen Alibaba's share price on Wall Street surge around 90% from this time a year ago — despite fears that AI-related stocks are overvalued worldwide and could crash.Its US shares closed 5% higher on Monday after the company said the Qwen app had surpassed 10mn downloads within the first week of its beta launch.Crystal Li and Tommy Wong of China Merchants Securities said last week that Qwen's launch was "supported by Alibaba's prolonged investment and cutting-edge capabilities in foundational models" for artificial intelligence.It could pave the way for the adoption of AI agents — programmes that use chatbots to do the work humans do online, such as buying a plane ticket or adding events to a calendar."Compared to ChatGPT's direct access to third-party apps, we believe Alibaba's self-developed comprehensive product ecosystem and free-to-use policy provide competitive advantages for Qwen app," Li and Wong wrote.Emily Jarvie of Proactive Investors also noted ahead of Tuesday's earnings release that "China is a key market for Qwen, as OpenAI's ChatGPT is not available"."Its rapid adoption makes it one of the fastest-growing AI apps in China," Jarvie said.Alibaba has also been in the headlines recently for other reasons, namely geopolitical tensions between China and the US.

OpenAI officially announced the launch of its AI-powered video creation app, Sora, for Android. The app includes a "Cameos" feature that allows users to create videos of themselves performing various activities using their real-life features and artificial intelligence (AI). These videos can be shared and interacted with by other users, a strategic move by the company to strengthen its position in the short-form video market.OpenAI said that it plans to add new features to the app, including the creation of animated videos, alongside basic video editing tools such as merging multiple clips to produce longer, multi-scene videos. It also plans to develop tools that allow users to customize suggested content to show content from specific accounts, giving them greater control over what they watch.The Sora app, which was released for iOS devices last September, is now available on the Google Play Store for Android devices.

OpenAI has introduced a new feature that enables users to access and use third-party applications directly within ChatGPT, in a move designed to transform the popular AI assistant into an integrated productivity platform capable of carrying out complex tasks in collaboration with online services. According to OpenAI, users can now open compatible applications during conversations, allowing ChatGPT to provide context, reasoning, and guidance while the external app executes specific actions. At launch, the available applications include Booking.com, Canva, Coursera, Expedia, Figma, Spotify, and Zillow, while additional apps such as DoorDash, OpenTable, Target, and Uber are expected to follow in the coming weeks. The company said the rollout builds on OpenAI's recent efforts to make ChatGPT more interactive, following the introduction of in-chat purchasing features earlier this year. In its official statement, OpenAI announced the release of a Software Development Kit (SDK), which allows developers to begin building experimental applications today. Later this year, developers will be able to submit their apps for review and publication through a dedicated directory that will enable users to browse, install, and interact with available tools. OpenAI explained that the new capabilities are based on the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open standard that connects ChatGPT with external services, facilitating seamless collaboration between users and third-party applications. Demonstrations shared by OpenAI showed how users could, for example, design a poster through Canva and then ask ChatGPT to generate a presentation using Figma, all within the same chat interface. The company also highlighted use cases such as searching for flights with Expedia or viewing home listings via Zillow, illustrating how everyday tasks can now be completed without leaving the chat. OpenAI emphasized that privacy and data control remain central to the experience. When a user first connects to an app, ChatGPT will display clear prompts explaining what information is being shared and for what purpose. The company stated that the feature will gradually roll out to users outside the European Union across the Free, Go, Plus, and Pro plans, with EU availability to follow later this year. OpenAI said the update reflects its broader vision of evolving ChatGPT from a text-based assistant into a "chatable" platform, one where users, developers, and services collaborate seamlessly in a unified workspace.

OpenAI is preparing to launch a standalone social app that resembles the TikTok experience, coinciding with the launch of its video generation AI model, Sora 2. According to a report published by Wired magazine, the app will feature a vertical video feed and swipe-to-scroll navigation. However, it will be limited to AI-generated content only, with no option to upload clips from a user's phone, and videos within the app are limited to 10 seconds or less, while the model's limit outside the platform remains unclear, Wired said. The report added that the app will integrate an identity verification feature that allows users to confirm their likeness created by the model, enabling others to tag users and use their likeness when they go to remix one of their videos, with the user receiving a notification immediately whenever their likeness is used by someone else, even if it is not posted. Regarding intellectual property owners, the app will not include copyrighted material, the report said. In this context, the Wall Street Journal said that OpenAI will require property owners to explicitly ask OpenAI not to include their copyright material in Sora 2 content. By incorporating a social aspect into the Sora model, OpenAI may seek to create its own community, making users less likely to migrate to competing platforms. Experts expect the app to be an early test of OpenAI's strategy of combining generative models with everyday user experiences, potentially opening the door to new forms of interaction between AI and social content. OpenAI recently launched ChatGPT Pulse for Pro subscribers, a tool that generates quick daily updates in the form of visual cards based on the user's personal data, including chat history and connected apps like Google Calendar and Gmail. These cards include personalized suggestions such as exercise plans, meal ideas, language lessons, and more.