The OpenAI trial wraps up,xa0and the Musk founder machine keeps spinning

The Musk v. Altman trial came to a close this week, and the final arguments kept circling back to one question:

can we trust the people in charge of AI?

All of this is playing out as SpaceX charges toward what could be one of the largest IPOs in American history, with

a whole generation


of founders

already spinning out of the Musk empire.

On this episode of TechCrunch’s

Equity

podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane break down the trial’s closing stretch and what the growing Elon Musk founder ecosystem looks like on the ground, and the other deals that caught our eye this week.

Listen to the full episode to hear about:

• 
  How
  
  Anduril landed a $5 billion Series H
  
  , more than doubling the valuation it landed just under a year ago
  

• 
  Why investors just can’t say no to Rivian’s RJ Scaringe, who’s raked in
  
  over $1 billion for spinout Mind Robotics
  
  

• 
  How voice AI startup
  
  Vapi beat out over 40 other companies
  
  to secure a contract handling all of Ring’s customer support
  

• 
  The Anthropic report about why
  
  AI agents tried to blackmailing
  
  its developers, and the debate over whether sci-fi narratives influenced its behavior.
  

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