“Snacks Mix”: Zuck and Musk play nice, quantum goes to the moon, and our hot takes for 2025

What we’re talking about this week on the podcast: Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk teaming up against OpenAI, Databricks raising a massive Series J, and Google’s quantum-computing breakthrough sending some sketchy stocks to the moon. Plus, Jack and Nia make their predictions for 2025.

We’ll be back in two weeks with a new episode — see you in 2025! Want to get in touch? Let us know what you think of the show and what we should cover next at podcasts@sherwood.news.

The following is an excerpt from this week’s “Snacks Mix” podcast. To listen to the full episode, click play in the soundbar above.

Nia Warfield: This week, Meta sent a letter to California’s attorney general supporting Elon Musk and his effort to block OpenAI from becoming a for-profit company. Musk first filed a lawsuit against OpenAI back in August, arguing that the company’s transition to a for-profit model would undermine its mission to advanced AI for the public. Good. Sounds a little dystopian, but, Jack, beyond the obvious goal of becoming profitable, why would Sam Altman and OpenAI try to make this shift now, and what are the general concerns?

Jack Raines: I wrote a piece on this a couple months ago. OpenAI raised $6.6 billion at a $157 billion valuation about a month ago, and that fundraise was contingent on it becoming a full for-profit entity. Previously, OpenAI was a capped profit entity where investors could only make like a 100x return on their investment.

Another weird thing about OpenAI is that it didn’t issue regular equity to investors and employees. When you buy stock in a company, you’re just buying the stock. OpenAI was issuing profit-sharing units that were effectively promissory notes on a share of future profits.

Thrive Capital, Microsoft, all these investors who poured in on the latest round were like: “We’ll invest $6 billion, but you need to be a normal for-profit company. Let’s quit all the weird stuff.”

OpenAI was going to adjust its structure accordingly, but now, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are saying, “No, you can’t change your structure.” They both have their own reasons for it. For example, Musk was a cofounder of OpenAI when it was a nonprofit. And then, Meta raised an interesting point with the attorney general: if OpenAI is allowed to switch from a nonprofit to a for-profit, why wouldn’t every startup just form as a nonprofit until they’re making money and then switch? There are tax benefits involved with starting as a nonprofit. If you’re an investor and you invest in a nonprofit, you have tax write-off benefits compared to investing in a normal, for-profit startup. However, the obvious reason for opposing this move by OpenAI is that Meta and Musk’s xAI are competitors, and they stand to benefit from OpenAI having issues.

Nia Warfield: One thing that’s interesting is that OpenAI, or rather Sam Altman, called Musk’s initial allegations false, claiming that there was no legal basis for the blocking. OpenAI then proceeded to publish a blog showing emails and text messages that appeared to show that Musk was initially in support of a for-profit model, but he ditched his support when OpenAI didn’t agree to giving him a majority equity stake in the company.

I don’t know if it’s true or not, but that was Altman’s reply. It got a little catty.

Jack Raines: It’s funny, right? If Musk was running OpenAI, he’d probably love for it to be for-profit because he’d stand to make money from it. He’d be the one making the money from it. Anyway, something interesting that Musk highlighted in the preliminary injunction that he filed against OpenAI two weeks ago is a claim that Microsoft and OpenAI violated antitrust laws because they asked investors that were investing in this funding round not to invest in other AI startups.

Musk argued that wasn’t fair because they restricted capital from flowing into competing firms. He made a good argument, but my favorite aspect of this whole ordeal is seeing Musk and Zuckerberg on the same side of an issue. Eighteen months ago, we thought they were going to fight in a cage match. (Zuckerberg would’ve crushed Elon Musk even though he is half his size, in my opinion.) However, capitalism is king, and they both have something to gain from OpenAI falling behind. In the AI wars, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Or at least my legal ally.

This was a preview of this week’s “Snacks Mix” podcast. To listen to the rest of the episode, where we discuss Elon Musk’s company town and Waymo pulling ahead in the self-driving race, check out “Snacks Mix” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or iHeartRadio.

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