Elon Musk vs. OpenAI Trial, OpenAI $50B Employee Stock Pool & E-Comm Reality | Jan 8, 2026

0:13Welcome, everyone, to the Informations TI TV. My name is Akash Pasricha. It is Thursday, January 8th. Today on the show, we are talking with our reporter who was at the courthouse this week following the Elon Musk OpenAI lawsuit. We also have some exclusive reporting around OpenAI's$50 billion stock grant pool for employees. Separately, we are digging into some new inside reporting we have about OpenAI's e-commerce ambitions and how those are going on the ground. I'm then talking with the CEO of cybersecurity company Netscope about that sector in the age of AI. And we will wrap with a conversation about health.

0:52We are bringing on a doctor and a longtime entrepreneur to break down what we think of OpenAI's latest health features. It's going to be a fun show. So let's get right on into things. A judge in California decided that Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI will go to a trial with a jury. My colleague, Raka Drew, was in the courtroom watching the proceedings play out. I want to bring him on to talk to us all about what he saw. Rocket, welcome back to the show. It's great to have you here. Thanks, Akash. Great to be here. So I just want to make sure I have this right, okay? Because you've explained this to me a couple of times, and I'm going to now explain to you what I understand this lawsuit to be about.

1:29So this is the lawsuit where Elon Musk said to OpenAI, you said you were going to remain a nonprofit. You didn't keep your word. He sued them. OpenAI still became a for-profit, it, but Elon Musk still wants money from OpenAI because he says that you didn't keep your word. That's right. That's exactly right. I mean, he has a long list of grievances against OpenAI, a number of ways that he feels that OpenAI hasn't kept its sort of promises to him that were made in the early days. The nonprofit structure was one of those, but there are other ways he feels they've departed from their kind of original charitable mission, including not open sourcing technology.

2:09He feels that safety has become kind of deprioritized. So he has other grievances as well. But the sort of full transition to a for-profit structure is something that is definitely top of mind. And so what happened at the courthouse yesterday? So OpenAI was making a particular ask to the court. They were saying, we've figured out a lot of the facts of the case already. We've made a bunch of people who are close to OpenAI sit for depositions, including Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Satya Nandela. We know the facts. OpenAI is saying even if you interpret those facts in a way that's very generous to Elon Musk, still, as a legal matter, you're going to find that his case doesn't have any merit to it.

2:50So you can just make a call right now. Spare us the trouble. Spare a jury. Just toss out this poll. Exactly. Exactly. The judge ended up finding, to the contrary, she feels that all of the claims, there are four claims that Elon Musk still has that are sort of live at this stage in the trial. All of them rest on questions of fact that are matters for a jury to decide. So all four of them are set to go to a trial. Okay. So this is going to trial. I want to ask you about why the average person should be paying attention to this story outside of the reasons that billionaires fighting each other is kind of fun to watch play out.

3:28As a reporter, how do you think about this? I mean, is this ultimately the idea that we could just learn a lot more about both sides of the story as, you know, evidence comes out. I mean, you've done some reporting about how much money could actually change hands. And I think the answer is it's not as big as people thought. So why should we be paying attention to this? Yeah, that's right. I mean, even in the most extreme situations where you get sort of a slam dunk win for Musk, maybe in that case, the amount that opening eye has to pay, it could reach into the billions, but that's not going to break the bank for OpenAI.

4:03It's also unlikely at this point that the court would intervene and try to rewind the restructuring that OpenAI has already completed because the attorneys general for California and Delaware have already signed off on that. So it's true that at this point, the outcomes from the case are unlikely to be sort of existential for either party. But I think it's interesting, first of all, like you said, because of the treasure trove of evidence that's coming out in the case. I mean, really interesting first person accounts from people who were involved in the negotiations that led Sam Altman to be fired from OpenAI in 2023 and then eventually reinstated.

4:40So it's a real look inside the room where those conversations were happening. It's also an interesting gauge of public opinion. I mean, what is a jury in Oakland, California going to think about Elon Musk versus Sam Altman? I mean, which of those sides is a jury going to be more sympathetic to i i think it's hard to say so it will be yeah but trial plays out and it'll give great fodder for the tv show that inevitably comes of it at some point i think well rocket uh i'm sure you are excited because if you were at the courthouse yesterday if it's going to trial i i take it you will be covering the trial on the ground then whenever it does play out great well it'll be a fun one to play out rocket i want to thank you for coming on.

5:21That is Rocket True, our AI and robotics reporter here at The Information. Okay. One big conversation across Silicon Valley is the AI talent war and the massive pay packages that companies are offering to secure top talent. In that same vein, The Information has exclusive reporting about OpenAI's big employee stock grant pool. Joining me now is the author of the piece, Shree Mupiti, our OpenAI and Anthropic reporter. Shree, welcome back to the show. It's great to have you here. Great to be here. So I'm going to read the first sentence of your story that you wrote and reported. You said, OpenAI last fall set aside an employee stock grant pool worth 10 % of the company, which was valued in October at$500 billion.

6:05So I don't want to assume that people know how these stock grant pools actually work. Help us understand what you found and what it means totally so what it means is essentially there is 50 billion dollars worth of potential stock grants that would go to employees or refreshes to existing employees and so that's supposed to last over the next five years and really shows the extent at which open ai is prioritizing rewarding and retaining talent and so how that came about was as part of the restructuring last fall when open ai turned into a corporate structure that allows it to eventually co-public it set aside roughly 130 billion dollars worth of the company when it was valued at 500 billion so that roughly equals out to 26 of the company of that 26 80 billion of that has already been allocated to employees or former employees so this is called vested equity and then the 50 remaining 50 billion remaining is towards this pool that will go towards future employees or rewarding existing employees as part of these refreshes.

7:08So that just is a huge amount and it's really exciting for a company like OpenAI just when these AI talent wars are heating up even more and more. So basically these shares have been created. There's$130 billion worth of shares. They've already paid out or allocated$80 billion. And now there's$50 billion more that you've basically found that they've set aside to pay out at some point in the future to their employees, depending on how much stock they want and negotiate for. So I think the bigger question that you kind of got at in your story is, how does this compare to other companies and how they allocate their stock?

7:50Totally. It's quite a large amount for a private company like OpenAI, but actually is more similar to a company like Meta, for example. over the last five years, Meta allocated roughly 66 billion of stock compensation. So comparing this to OpenAI's 50 billion, for example, but Google, for example, spends a lot more. They spent roughly 100 billion over the last five years. Of course, these are historical versus the 50 billion is towards OpenAI's future five years. And so maybe we'll see Meta and Google spend also increase. But one thing that really stands out is that Meta and Google, of course, are much larger companies.

8:25They have huge market caps and they are in like hundreds of billions of revenue. And so when you're comparing against OpenAI that at least ended last year in 13 billion in revenue, you really see sort of the jump and disconnect there. But I think that really shows, again, OpenAI's ambitions to try to compete with the likes of this, just because if you are having these top AI researchers and you're competing against Google and Meta, you need to be able to keep up. And so I think that shows that. The other thing I wanted to highlight too was that the employee stock grant pool is 10 % of the company at the current$500 billion valuation.

9:03But of course, as OpenAI raises more money and the valuation increases, that stock pool worth actually goes up as well. And so you see that as well with the stock compensation expenses that they've allocated from their last summer's projections as well. Do investors like this? Investors, I think, understand that this is a part of a private company's future and it's necessary to be able to reward talent and be able to compete. And so overall, they understand this, but of course, it bites when you have dilution from, for example,$130 billion worth of employee stock grants, especially this$50 billion pool.

9:44But I think they understand it's necessary, and so it's something that they're accepting. I think it also is a little bit interesting to think about the power dynamic here between OpenAI and investors and then the employees. You know, on one hand, you have the researchers who they are the product in the talent war that everyone is going after. So they have some leverage there. And then you have OpenAI, which, you know, probably has their choice of investors and, you know, who to take money from. Although if I think about this, OpenAI needs the money from investors. I guess where this all nets out is I'm not sure who has the power here, but it is interesting to see how all these ripples very much play out.

10:28Totally. I think employees are working hard right now is what I'm hearing, but they're being rewarded well as well. For example, in a recent court filings that my colleague Rocket found, they found that Ilya, one of the co-founders of OpenAI, had roughly$4 billion invested equity by 2021. And so you can imagine how much more he potentially has now. And so even after having left the company. And so I think that just shows the stake and the size of the stakes that employees are getting. Right. Well, I want to thank you for coming on. I trust that there is much more money to uncover. And I think it was some great reporting.

11:03That is Sri Mupiti, our OpenAI and Anthropic reporter here at The Information. OK, OpenAI has been very public about its ambitions to integrate shopping into its platform. Although a new in-depth story from the information today gives a mixed picture on how those efforts are actually going on the ground and how difficult it is to actually get all this to work. I want to bring on Anne Guillen, our e-commerce reporter who wrote that story to talk to us about what she found. And welcome back to the show. It's great to have you here. Hey, Akash. So how are OpenAI's shopping efforts going? You know, they're going.

11:42They're moving along, but maybe potentially a bit slower than some people would have hoped. And so in my story today, I took a look at, you know, what the rollout since OpenAI first announced this feature for ChatGPT in September, what that's been like. And it's taken a lot of work on, you know, on the part of both OpenAI as well as all of the other companies that they've partnered with to make this work. So some other key partners include Shopify, which has given OpenAI, you know, an in with all of the millions of merchants that use their software to host their stores, as well as Stripe. OpenAI and Stripe actually created together what's called the Agentic Commerce Protocol, which they intend to be kind of this set of rules and standards so that everyone can kind of be on the same page about how these transactions that agents will be handling, how it's going to work, and just kind of like set some ground rules.

12:49and, you know, it was described to me as kind of like a lingua franca so that everyone, you know, is building towards the same thing, you know, so that everything can work together more smoothly. And so what is so difficult about this? Is the Shopify side harder in that setting up all the retail systems is the real challenge? Or is the payment side really the challenge here? I mean, there's a lot of considerations here. And I think part of why this is so complex is it's a lot of different systems that all have to work together and coordinate and communicate. But right now, according to my reporting, it seems like a lot of the time and energy is focused on working pretty closely with the merchants that are live and helping them with their product data.

13:41You know, every merchant handles sizing and pricing and inventory information differently. And so just, again, that idea of trying to get everyone on the same page and making everything, you know, work together correctly so that when it does, you know, get to a user who's trying to make a purchase that everything's accurate and works smoothly. Now, what about the other platforms out there that have said that they are interested in shopping? I think, if I'm not mistaken, Perplexity had something in this arena, right? Is theirs further ahead? Yeah, that's correct. So Perplexity, they were very early to launch commerce features.

14:23And it's interesting because they also dealt with some of these issues, you know, wrangling all of this very messy data from merchants and trying to get it to not only show up to users correctly, but then on the back end when you're actually facilitating a purchase, you know, making everything work correctly. So this definitely is not a problem that's unique to OpenAI, but I think just really speaks to just how challenging, you know, adding in AI agents or AI apps to e-commerce has been. You know, it's just really complicated. And there's a lot of different companies at play and there's a lot of different things, you know, that all need to work smoothly for it to be perfect for the user.

15:11How big an opportunity do we think this is for OpenAI? Well, my colleagues have reported that OpenAI wants to make something on the order of, you know,$110 billion from its free users by the end of this decade. So in the next four years, I think a lot of people expect that commerce will be a big piece of that. So OpenAI has said they might take a cut of some of the sales that are made on ChatGPT. It's a pretty standard kind of marketplace model. So I think as this scales up, they certainly will be seeing more revenue coming from that if they do start taking a cut of the sales that they make. and then, you know, as well as introducing commerce also brings in the potential for advertising, which, you know, is a whole other debate that we've written about a bunch.

16:06But it's certainly, it's a huge opportunity for open AI. And so I think it makes sense that they are rolling this out very slowly and, you know, trying to figure out exactly how to get this perfect before they kind of flip the switch and open it up to everybody. Now, you've also covered e-commerce with the social media platforms and how TikTok, for example, has waded deeper into that category. And we've done some reporting about Instagram and I guess we've seen that story play out in terms of it going in and out of shopping. I don't know. I'm not sure where it stands now. It feels like they always want to do more shopping and then there's sort of less of it happening.

16:49But what lessons do you think OpenAI can learn from the way that TikTok, for example, tried to integrate with shopping beyond just it being difficult, which I think we understand? I wonder if there are behavioral considerations from customers that you think they are learning from insofar as how people actually do their buying. For sure. And I think that's something that they're extremely mindful of. And I think this also relates to the advertising conversation as well. You know, people use ChatGPT for a huge range of things, but a lot of times it's really personal information and personal conversations that you're having with ChatGPT.

17:32And so how are people going to feel if then, you know, you start prompting them to buy something or show them an ad? And so I think that's something that OpenAI, you know, hasn't at least publicly kind of said what their strategy will be. But I think that's something they're extremely mindful of because I think if you start putting commerce in places where users don't expect it or aren't ready for it, I think that's a huge, huge turnoff. And so that could be a pretty big dent to their ambitions if it doesn't go over well with consumers. Great. Well, Anne, I want to thank you for coming on. That is Anne Guillen, our e-commerce reporter here at The Information.

18:15Okay, I want to talk a little bit about cybersecurity. It is yet another pocket of the enterprise software sector that AI is changing quickly. Netscope is one company that sits at the center of that story. The company is trading below its IPO price, although it is now generating cash on a trailing 12-month basis. Joining me now is Sanjay Barry, CEO of Netscope. Sanjay, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here. Great to be invited. Appreciate it. So I want to talk a little bit about the cybersecurity sector in the era of AI broadly. And the basic question I have for you is, AI net good or net bad for cybersecurity?

18:55Well, net good is my view. And look, the reality is attackers are going to use AI, as you've seen, and they'll use AI in every way they can. Every tool they can get their hands on, they'll use to attack. But the reality is that AI can be used for good, for protection, for automation, to help mid-sized companies and small companies and large across the board defend themselves and, of course, increase productivity while doing it. And so talk a little bit about how you are approaching this new era of AI at Netscope. I wonder how you think about your differentiation against some of these newer and flashier startups that probably have smaller teams that can move a little faster.

19:38How do you think about competing with them? Yeah. So if you look at us, we're one of the highest growth public market cyber companies out there, right? We grew at 34 % from an AR perspective last quarter. We're at scale, but we have a phrase, innovate or die. So we're nimble, and we invest heavily in our R &D. We've had AI labs for eight years. We have over 160 models, domain-specific models to protect and identify sensitive data, protect against malware, detect issues in your network and beyond. In addition to those models and that broad AI Labs team, which, by the way, AI is used throughout all of our 20-plus products on the platform, these models, we also focus on protecting and enabling AI.

20:23And this is the nuance. You don't go into a company and say, hey, by the way, we don't want you using AI. No, Well, nobody does that. You have to use it as any company in any vertical. What we do is we let you say yes to using it and put guardrails around it. You want to say, hey, you can use Gemini, but only the corporate instance. And I don't want you querying with sensitive healthcare data. Simple policy on Nefscope. And so for us, our focus is guardrail AI, enable usage, and enable people to leverage it. But I'm trying to sort of understand, you know, for pure play cybersecurity companies, On one hand, from below, you have these flashier startups that raise a ton of funding and their products get traction.

21:07And in some cases, they have smaller teams. On the other hand, you have these bigger companies like Microsoft and ServiceNow that have these really broad suites of products where their value prop is, well, don't just give us your cybersecurity business, give us the whole suite. Right. How do you, in the middle there, how do you think about your value proposition against both of those categories? Yeah, it's a great question. So I'm a believer there is not one platform for all of security and networking. I remember sitting in a room asking 100 CIOs, where do you want to be on the scale? You want 100 security networking products or you want one?

21:40And they said, no, no, we don't want any of those. We don't want 100 and we don't want one. We want a few core platforms. And one of those core platforms is what we do, the evolution of data network security called SASE, which we're the leader in per most analyst reports. And so I'm the believer in that. A few core security networking platforms working well together in an ecosystem. We were named Microsoft ISV Partner of the Year, right? And there's a reason that we get that recognition from analysts and other vendors, is no matter what you use, two plus public clouds, average customer uses 100 plus SaaS apps, They use tens of generative AI applications.

22:22They go to billions of websites. It doesn't matter what you use. You have one common consistent layer at that network and security level that can govern and secure all of those. That's really what customers want. They don't want to be locked into, hey, it only works for this app or only works for this solution. Yet they also don't want something that is only going to cover one part of that equation, like only data protection. So that Goldilocks of we won't lock you into the whole suite of everything, but we'll also give you more than just the point solution, I guess. I want to talk to you a little bit about just broadly what it's like to run a software company in 2026.

23:06You've been building the company now for, I think, 13 years now, I think, if I'm not mistaken. I mean, how is running a SaaS company or a software company broadly different today than it was 10 years ago? Is there a difference in the talent that you have to go after? Is the talent younger? Is it more technical? How have you seen that change? Yeah, it's a good question. Look, we've always believed in technical talent and development. We invest a significant amount in our R &D from an innovation perspective. I invest in things that are two, three years out. think about AI labs for eight years, I would tell you nobody cared for five years.

23:46I talk about AI in front of customers and be like, what are you talking about, Sanjay? Now, of course, they do. And so we have a saying, at least where I grew up in Canada, skate to where the puck's going. And so I feel like that - I like it as a fellow Canadian, I like it. I like it. But I feel like what's different is it's recognized more, right? One of the nuances of when you go and become a public market company, a lot of people, they manage their company quarter by quarter or year by year. That's not how I do it. I'm going to be here in 10 plus years. And so the way I run our company and the way I think you should when you're developing core platforms in tech is you got to invest for the future.

24:22And I think that's lost in a lot of times in organizations, but I think it's well recognized now, right? In the sense of, wait a minute, you're looking at the next wave, AI, you're looking at physical AI, you're looking at. And so I think that's changed. The second part is technical talent. talent nowadays, you have to leverage AI as part of that technical talent. Right? And so you want people who want to learn. You want people, like no one woke up 10 years ago saying, hey, I'm an expert in using these tools. They didn't exist. And so we've always gone for people who are a little more entrepreneurial, a little more, they're willing to learn, to grasp new technology, to move quick, right?

25:01They're not satisfied by just sitting there and leveraging something 20 years ago. And so that leads you to a little different talent, I would say, and mindset of people. Before we go, so you went public in September. I want to understand what the calculus was to go public when you did. We talk about this IPO window, and it's a bit of a dance, right? Where are the markets going? What's the right time? Why did you decide September? And what advice do you have to late-stage founders who are looking at the window right now? Yeah, so look, the reason that we went IPO was for awareness. And, you know, the reality is we went over 80 % of the time if we can get to a POC, proof of concept, i.e.

25:39our nirvana is just try the platform, right? That's our nirvana. And so when you think about that, we really compete against public market companies who have the benefit of the awareness and the natural this that you get when you're public. So it wasn't just to raise money. No, the reality is everyone knows you can raise money in the private markets too, right? I mean, there's no secret to that. And so for us, it was, look, we can grab the awareness from being a public company. We've operated like that internally for a long time, right? The discipline, the infrastructure, the committees, the so on.

26:13And then third, it is a currency, right? When you think about recruiting, when you think about, you know, we generally build organically, to be frank, like look at our platform, we built it organically. And so all of those things. And the other thing too is, look, this is the first inning of our company. I'll be here in 10 plus years. If you're in the company, you know, every meeting we have and every all hands, everyone knows, okay, that was the first inning. We're now in the second inning of the company. And so that's the mindset. If you went public then for awareness, now that you've been a public company for a couple months and you've certainly been private, I mean, look, there's pros and cons of both.

26:50There's more obligations as a public company. what then is your advice to founders looking to take their company public? Yeah. So one, look, it's not for everybody and it isn't necessarily the right answer for everybody. So you have to be ready. So one, I actually have to be ready. Look, we're cashflow positive. We grow at over 30 % pure subscription, right? We run at mid seventies now operating at gross margin, which has gone up, you know, by 10 points over the past years. And so So financial profile, one, important. And so we obviously have that profile and the growth. Second, you got to be in a big TAM, big fish in a big pond.

27:26For us, it's one of the most durable markets for the next decade. And then the third, look, you got to be ready as the intestinal fortitude. You have to stick to your convictions. Don't get burnt, put into this quarter by quarter, make decisions, optimizing on that. You're here for the long term, right? And if that's what you're for and you have the conviction and the board and you've set that expectation internally in the culture, I think you can succeed and get the benefit of being public, right? The awareness and beyond. But like I said, it's not for everybody. Well, Sanjay, I want to thank you for coming on.