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In Today’s Issue:
🤑 A U.S. judge clears the way for a March trial to decide if OpenAI violated its nonprofit mission by pivoting to profit
💵 Research VP Jerry Tworek departs amid internal clashes over resources
📈 Z.ai debuts on the Hong Kong exchange with a ~$6.8B valuation
📉 CEO Anthony Wood launches a $2.99 budget streamer
✨ And more AI goodness…
Dear Readers,
What happens when AI stops being a lab experiment and starts colliding with courts, capital markets, and culture all at once? Today’s issue opens with Elon Musk forcing OpenAI toward a jury trial over its nonprofit-to-profit shift, then dives into internal fault lines as a top OpenAI research leader exits amid clashes over the company’s direction. Zooming out, we track a milestone in China: Z.ai becomes the world’s first publicly listed LLM company, signaling that foundation models are now an investable industrial category. From there, Jensen Huang pushes back on the “AI bubble,” Roku bets the first fully AI-generated hit movie is closer than you think, and Brussels shifts from writing tech rules to enforcing them, just as AI becomes the next regulatory battlefield. Power, money, and narrative are converging fast—keep reading to see who’s gaining leverage.
All the best,
⚖️ Musk Scores OpenAI Court Win
A U.S. judge ruled there’s enough evidence for a jury to hear Elon Musk’s claim that OpenAI broke its nonprofit promise by shifting toward a for-profit model. The case, targeting leaders like Sam Altman and involving Microsoft, heads to trial in March and could reshape how mission-driven AI labs operate amid fierce generative AI competition.
🚪 OpenAI Research VP Departs - update
WIRED figured out that Jerry Tworek is leaving OpenAI after internal disagreements over research direction and limited resources for his next major bet, with leadership ultimately backing Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki. The exit follows a December research reorg and highlights how fiercely contested priorities have become as OpenAI faces growing pressure from rivals like Google and Anthropic, even as leaders like CRO Mark Chen tout an ambitious 2026 roadmap toward an automated scientist. Tworek leaves after contributing to major breakthroughs like ChatGPT, underscoring a bigger question: which lab will deliver the next AI leap as competition and capital intensify.
🚀 China’s First LLM IPO Moment
One of China’s biggest AI companies Z.ai officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, becoming the world’s first publicly traded large language model company with a market cap of HK$52.83 billion after debuting at HK$120 per share. Backed early by Qiming Venture Partners, Z.ai’s GLM models now serve 12,000+ enterprises, power 80 million devices, and reach 45 million developers worldwide, highlighting China’s accelerating push in foundational AI. The listing signals strong investor confidence in homegrown, full-stack AGI as a long-term industrial force.
NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang on Reasoning Models, Robotics, and Refuting the “AI Bubble” Narrative
Roku’s $3 Streamer Meets AI
The Takeaway
👉 Roku is launching a $2.99/month ad-free streaming service aimed at price-sensitive viewers and library content
👉 CEO Anthony Wood predicts the first fully AI-generated hit movie will arrive within the next three years.
👉 Advances in generative AI are rapidly lowering production costs across animation, VFX, dubbing, and post-production.
👉 As content creation gets cheaper, distribution, branding, and platform control become the main competitive advantages.
Streaming has been on a one-way escalator: higher prices, more ads, fewer surprises. At CES 2026, Roku CEO Anthony Wood is trying to break the pattern with Howdy — a $2.99/month, ad-free service built around “library” movies and shows — and he says Roku wants to take it beyond Roku devices, potentially across the web, mobile, and rival TVs.
Then came the bigger provocation: Wood predicts that within three years we’ll get the first “100% AI-generated” hit movie. Read that less as sci-fi and more as a cost curve. If generative tools make storyboarding, VFX, dubbing, and even animation feel like software workflows, the barrier to shipping “good enough” entertainment drops fast — and distribution becomes the real moat. In that world, the next “studio” could look like a small team with great taste and a great model.
Why it matters: Streaming economics are resetting around price fatigue, not just content wars. For AI builders, the prize is end-to-end pipelines (creation + rights + distribution) — who’s positioning for that stack first?
Sources:
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EU Draws Line on Big Tech
In 2026, the EU is moving from writing tech rules to enforcing them—aggressively—against the biggest digital “gatekeepers”: Google, Meta, Apple, and X. Picture a referee who’s done explaining the rulebook and is finally calling fouls.
Brussels is leaning on two heavyweight laws. The Digital Markets Act targets unfair platform power (think: self-preferencing and lock-in). The Digital Services Act pushes platforms to be more transparent and faster at addressing illegal content. Early moves already show teeth: the Commission fined X €120 million for transparency breaches, and pressure on Apple and Meta has nudged business-model changes.
Now the next frontier is AI. Regulators are probing whether Meta’s WhatsApp policy could block rival AI assistants from reaching customers, and whether Google’s use of online content for training models warps competition. All of this lands as President Trump warns of retaliation—raising the risk of a transatlantic tech-and-trade clash.
Still, if Europe can enforce consistently, it could open real space for smaller AI labs, publishers, and startups to compete on merit, not on distribution dominance.
