• Legal Dispute Initiation: Elon Musk And OpenAI Leadership Enter A Federal Court Trial Regarding Alleged Breaches Of Original Nonprofit Commitments
• Financial Claims Impact: Litigation Seeks Potential Damages Totaling 134 Billion Dollars And Requests The Unwinding Of For Profit Restructuring
• Organizational Evolution History: Founding Principles Focused On Humanity Benefit Led To Subsequent Structural Changes And For Profit Subsidiary Creation
• Industry Rivalry Dynamics: Former Business Partners Have Become Competitive Adversaries Through The Formation Of Independent AI Ventures And Corporate Mergers
• Judicial Process Structure: District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers Presides Over A Bifurcated Trial Consisting Of A Liability Phase Followed By A Remedies Phase
• Remaining Litigation Scope: Four Original Claims Persist Including Unjust Enrichment And Breach Of Charitable Trust While Others Are Subject To Streamlining Efforts
• Defense Position Stance: Startup Representatives Characterize Legal Actions As Evasive Tactics Driven By Ego And A Desire To Obstruct Market Competition
• Future Market Developments: The Legal Outcome Remains A Potential Risk Factor Ahead Of Anticipated Public Market Debuts For Involved Entities

• TSLA-1.04 (-0.28%)

VIDEO2:3702:37

Elon Musk and Sam Altman go to court — here’s what to expect

Tech

A yearslong legal brawl between Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman heads to court in Northern California on Monday in a dramatic showdown between two of the most high-profile names in the tech industry.

In his $134 billion lawsuit, Musk claimed that OpenAI, Altman and the company’s president, Greg Brockman, reneged on a vow they made to keep the artificial intelligence lab a nonprofit in perpetuity. OpenAI has since restructured so that it can operate a for-profit subsidiary, and it’s now valued at over $850 billion.

Musk and Altman were once close friends, and were among a group of techies who founded OpenAI in 2015 out of a shared concern over the potential power of AI and the need to advance it in ways that would benefit humanity.

Now they’re public enemies and bitter rivals, with Musk having started xAI as an OpenAI competitor in 2023 and recently merging it with SpaceX in a deal valuing the combined entity at $1.25 trillion. The trial lands as Musk is preparing to take SpaceX public in what will likely be a record IPO.

OpenAI is targeting a potential fourth-quarter market debut, as CNBC previously reported. In a document distributed to prospective investors earlier this year, OpenAI characterized the ongoing litigation with Musk as a potential risk to its business.

The startup has repeatedly dismissed Musk’s lawsuit as “baseless,” calling it a “harassment campaign that’s driven by ego, jealousy and a desire to slow down a competitor,” according to a post on X earlier in April.

The war of words has been going on for months.

“Scam Altman lies as easily as he breathes,” Musk wrote in August in a post on X, which is part of xAI.  

“Really excited to get Elon under oath in a few months, Christmas in April!,” Altman wrote on X in February. 

Jury selection in Musk v. Altman begins Monday in a federal courthouse in Oakland, just over the Bay Bridge from San Francisco, where OpenAI is headquartered. Should he succeed, Musk said, he wants the court to return all “ill-gotten gains” to OpenAI’s nonprofit, not to him personally. He’s also seeking to have Altman and Brockman removed from their roles and to “unwind OpenAI’s for-profit conversion and restructuring.” 

It’s not the only litigation Musk has brought against OpenAI. X, formerly Twitter, along with xAI sued OpenAI and Apple in 2025 for alleged anticompetitive behavior. A hearing in that case is scheduled for May in Texas. And in February, a federal judge in California dismissed a separate lawsuit from xAI that accused OpenAI of stealing its trade secrets.

VIDEO3:5503:55

Musk, Altman rivalry escalates with new OpenAI hire

TechCheck

The Musk-Altman spat dates back to 2018, when Musk left OpenAI’s board after a number of disagreements with Altman and Brockman about the company’s direction, including a failed effort to merge the startup with Tesla, Musk’s electric vehicle company. Following Musk’s departure, OpenAI established a for-profit subsidiary that allowed it to raise outside investments more easily. 

OpenAI briefly considered plans to transition into a for-profit company in 2024, which would have wrested control from the nonprofit and kept it as a separate arm. But after facing pressure from civic leaders and ex-employees, including Musk, it changed course. The company completed a recapitalization in October that cemented its structure as a nonprofit with a controlling stake in its for-profit business.

Musk sued OpenAI, Altman and Brockman in 2024, alleging that he was “assiduously manipulated” and “deceived” by their promises that the company “would chart a safer, more open course than profit-driven tech giants.”

But the scope of Musk’s claims have shifted dramatically in recent months, as well as his desired outcomes.

In a January filing, Musk’s attorneys said he should receive up to $134 billion in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, one of OpenAI’s longtime backers, which is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit. Microsoft is accused of aiding and abetting OpenAI’s alleged misconduct on the breach of charitable trust claim.

Read more CNBC tech news

• Nvidia backs AI company Vast Data at $30 billion valuation
• Google unveils chips for AI training and inference in latest shot at Nvidia
• SpaceX says it can buy Cursor later this year for $60 billion or pay $10 billion for ‘our work together’
• Apple’s elevation of silicon head Johny Srouji signals sprint to build in-house chips for all devices

Of the 26 claims that Musk asserted against OpenAI, Altman and Brockman in November 2024, only four remain: unjust enrichment, fraud, constructive fraud, and breach of charitable trust. Musk’s lawyers are seeking to dismiss two of the claims, fraud and constructive fraud, ahead of the trial in an effort to “streamline the case,” according to a filing.

OpenAI’s lawyers on Wednesday characterized Musk’s actions as “evasive tactics.”

“Trial begins in five days but Plaintiff still refuses to state plainly what claims he will pursue and what remedies he will seek,” they wrote in a filing. 

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama to U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in 2011, is presiding over the case. Gonzalez Rogers has overseen several high-profile lawsuits involving technology companies, including the antitrust case between Epic Games and Apple.

Nine jurors will be seated, and there will be no alternates, according to a March filing.

Gonzalez Rogers opted to divide the trial into two parts: a liability phase to decide if any wrongdoing occurred, and a remedies phase to determine the appropriate damages and next steps. The jury will weigh in during the liability phase only, and its verdict will be advisory, which means Gonzalez Rogers will make the final decision in both sections of the trial. 

The liability phase of the trial is expected to last through mid-May, and the court will be in session from 8:30 a.m. to 1:40 p.m. PT every Monday through Thursday.

Jury selection will be followed by opening arguments. Gonzalez Rogers has given attorneys for Musk and OpenAI a total of around 20 hours each to present their case. Microsoft will get five hours, according to a filing. 

All three parties submitted a list of witnesses that they can call. Musk, Altman, Brockman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella are all named.

If OpenAI is found liable, Gonzalez Rogers will hear arguments for the remedies phase, which is scheduled to begin on May 18. 

“However, if the jury finds that Musk failed to file his action within the statute of limitations, it is highly likely that the Court will accept that finding and direct verdict to the defendants,” Gonzalez Rogers wrote. 

CNBC will be in the courtroom starting Monday. Follow the latest coverage here.

WATCH: How three possible mega-IPOs could upend markets

VIDEO3:0403:04

How three possible mega-IPOs could upend markets

Closing Bell: Overtime

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• Experimental Design: Researchers compared human performance, AI performance, and human-AI hybrid teams in forecasting real-world events.
• Predictive Accuracy: Large AI models outperformed humans working in isolation, though human-AI hybrids displayed the highest potential for total accuracy.
• Hybrid Pitfalls: Many hybrid users relied on AI for direct answers, leading to poor outcomes characterized by confirmation bias and sycophancy.
• Collaborative Cyborgs: A small subset of users treated AI as a sparring partner to interrogate assumptions and challenge AI-generated assertions.
• Cognitive Requirements: Successful integration requires perspective-taking and intellectual humility rather than simple reliance on technological convenience.
• Information Exploration Paradox: High volumes of easily accessible information may reduce critical thinking and individual exploration, potentially leading to human skill atrophy.
• Strategic Reframe: AI should be utilized to search for what is missing in one's own logic rather than as a tool to automate routine labor.
• Developmental Necessity: Cultivating cognitive resistance to AI-generated easy answers is essential for maintaining human agency and intellectual rigor.

By

Vivienne Ming

April 24, 2026 2:00 pm ET

10

EDMON DE HARO FOR WSJ; ROBOT ARM, FIREFLY

Who’s smarter, the human or the machine? 

In the 30 years I’ve worked in artificial intelligence that’s been the question driving the conversation. 

We’ve also been sold a story about AI that goes something like this: It will handle the tedious, routine work—the research, the first draft, the number-crunching—while we focus on the interesting parts: creativity, judgment, the human touch.  

My research suggests we’ve been asking the wrong question and drawing the wrong conclusions. 

A few months ago, I recruited adults from San Francisco’s Bay Area for an experiment. I gave each group one hour to make predictions about real-world events, using scenarios drawn from the prediction market platform Polymarket. This provided us a rigorous, objective way to check results against the collective wisdom of thousands of financially motivated forecasters. In addition to AI making predictions on its own, some human teams worked alone, while others worked as human-AI hybrids. (Polymarket has a data partnership with Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal).

The human groups performed poorly, relying on instinct or whatever information had come across their feeds that morning. The large AI models—ChatGPT and Gemini, in this case—performed considerably better, though still short of the market itself.

But when we combined AI with humans, things got more interesting.

Most hybrid teams used AI for the answer and submitted it as their own, performing no better than the AI alone. Others fed their own predictions into AI and asked it to come up with supporting evidence. These “validators” had stumbled into a classic confirmation bias-loop: the sycophancy that leads chatbots to tell you what you want to hear, even if it isn’t true. They ended up performing worse than an AI working solo. 

But in roughly 5% to 10% of teams, something different emerged. The AI became a sparring partner. The teams pushed back, demanding evidence and interrogating assumptions. When the AI expressed high confidence, the humans questioned it. When the humans felt strongly about an intuition, they asked the AI to come up with a counterargument. 

The hybrids were becoming cyborgs.

These teams reached insightful conclusions that neither a human nor a machine could have produced on its own. They were the only group to consistently rival the prediction market’s accuracy. On certain questions, they even outperformed it.

It’s not that these people were more intelligent than the others in the study. But they demonstrated two important qualities: perspective-taking and intellectual humility.

Perspective-taking is the ability to genuinely inhabit another point of view. Not to debate it, not to tolerate it, but to actually inhabit it. Intellectual humility is the ability to recognize the edge of your own knowledge and sit with that discomfort rather than trying to rush to fill it.  

Both of these qualities are, at root, emotional skills. Perspective-taking requires genuine curiosity about minds other than your own. Intellectual humility requires a kind of emotional courage: the willingness to feel uncertain, even a little foolish, in the presence of something or someone that seems very sure of itself. 

These are not the soft skills we typically celebrate. We celebrate confidence. We promote decisiveness. We are building AI systems specifically designed to give us the answer before we feel the discomfort of not having it.  

What my experiment suggests is that the human qualities most likely to matter are not the feel-good ones. They’re the uncomfortable ones: the capacity to be wrong in public and stay curious; to sit with a question your phone could answer in three seconds and resist the urge to reach for it. To read a confident, fluent response from an AI and ask yourself, “What’s missing?” rather than default to “Great, that’s done.” To disagree with something that sounds authoritative and to trust your instinct enough to follow it.

We don’t build these capacities by avoiding discomfort. We build them by choosing it, repeatedly, in small ways: the student who struggles through a problem before checking the answer; the person who asks a follow-up question in a conversation; the reader who sits with a difficult idea long enough for it to actually change one’s mind. Most AI chatbots today default to easy answers, which is hurting our ability to think critically 

I call this the Information-Exploration Paradox. As the cost of information approaches zero, human exploration collapses. We see it in students who perform better on AI-assisted tasks and worse on everything afterward. We see it in developers shipping more code and understanding it less. We are, in ways that feel like progress, slowly optimizing ourselves out of the loop.

This is the divergence I worry about. Not the dramatic science-fiction scenario of AI replacing humans wholesale, but the quieter process of people gradually outsourcing their judgment in increments too small to notice. 

Over time, this produces two different kinds of people: Those who use AI as a genuine intellectual partner—whose thinking actually gets sharper through the friction of the collaboration—and those who get better at securing quick answers and worse at knowing what questions to ask.

So what can any of us actually do about it?

Start with the reframe: The goal of working with AI isn’t to get the answer faster. It’s to find out what you’re missing. Don’t deploy AI minions to “do the boring work” for you, as so many sales pitches argue; use it as a savant collaborator to explore uncertainty. 

In practice, that means before you accept an AI’s answer, ask it for the strongest argument against itself. When it hedges or qualifies, pay attention—that’s usually where the real uncertainty lives. Treat it like a brilliant colleague who has read everything and understands nothing—useful precisely because they’re different from you, not because they’ll agree with you.

For the AI industry, a key design question has gone largely unasked: Is the product building human capacity or consuming it? Nearly all AI benchmarks measure what AI agents can do alone. We desperately need benchmarks for hybrid intelligence. Errors are signals our brains use to trigger learning. An AI that eliminates friction entirely is often eliminating the learning along with it.

A hopeful finding is that perspective-taking, intellectual humility and curiosity are not fixed traits. They can be cultivated and respond to practice, the right relationships and environments that reward uncertainty. 

But they require us to decide—as individuals, as parents, as educators, as designers of tools—that this is what we’re trying to build. And in the race between human potential and human atrophy, the stakes for building it could not be higher.

Vivienne Ming is a theoretical neuroscientist, cognitive scientist and the author of “Robot-Proof: When Machines Have All The Answers, Build Better People.” 

Copyright ©2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the April 25, 2026, print edition as 'Is AI Smarter Than People? It’s Complicated.'.

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Videos

• Strategic Objectives: Israel intends to secure its northern border and terminate Hezbollah’s logistical supply chains.
• Syrian Leadership Motivations: President Ahmed al-Sharaa prioritizes regime survival through centralized power, financial recovery, and international recognition.
• Regional Realignment: Syria is actively seeking to remove Iranian influence and Hezbollah operatives from its territory to realign with Western interests.
• Proactive Security Measures: Syrian security forces have intercepted weapon shipments hidden in humanitarian aid and blocked rocket attacks directed at Israel.
• Territorial Assertion: The Syrian military has occupied border positions to enforce regulatory control and dismantle Hezbollah-associated propaganda and infrastructure.
• Diplomatic Incentives: The European Union has proposed a cooperation agreement and multi-billion euro financial aid packages to support Syrian state rehabilitation.
• Geopolitical Engagement: The Syrian president has secured high-level diplomatic recognition through official visits with Saudi Arabian leadership.
• Transactional Cooperation: Syrian efforts to curb Hezbollah are driven by specific political and economic concessions provided by the international community rather than ideological affinity.

Israel’s presence in southern Lebanon has two objectives: protect northern residents from direct rocket fire and choke Hezbollah’s “logistical oxygen line.” But to fully strangle the organization, Israel needs—and has received—the help of another pair of hands: those belonging to Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa. In the eighteen months since his ascent to power, al-Sharaa has been guided by one instinct: survival. In the “New Syria,” that survival is defined by three pillars: centralization of power, international legitimacy and a desperate need for financial rehabilitation. These interests have converged into a singular, pragmatic mission: the expulsion of Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah, from Syrian soil. In a recent visit to the Chatham House research institute in London, al-Sharaa stated that Syria “paid a heavy price for Hezbollah’s involvement” and that his duty now is to “cut the lifeline” of the organization passing through his territory. Analysis by the Institute for the Study of War points to a dramatic change in Syrian behavior. Recently, Syrian forces exposed a massive smuggling tunnel in the Homs area and intercepted a shipment of 6,000 explosives and missile components hidden inside a “humanitarian aid” truck. Videos are also circulating on Telegram showing Syrian soldiers manning roadblocks near the Lebanese border, searching Hezbollah trucks and tearing down posters of Nasrallah. In one video, a Syrian officer is heard telling a Hezbollah operative, “The days when Syria was your backyard are over; now we are the ones in charge here.” The crackdown has even escalated into direct military disruption. Between April 15 and 19, Syrian security forces thwarted several rocket attacks directed at Israel by seizing a truck containing ready-to-fire rocket launchers and arresting members of a Hezbollah-linked cell. These actions are hardly the result of al-Sharaa’s secret Zionism. Rather, by persecuting the network, he is proving to the international community and the Trump administration that Syria is no longer a forward base for Iran. The Syrians aren’t doing this for free, either. In addition to an American rehabilitation package and the removal of sanctions, President al-Sharaa received a significant political and economic boost from the European Union this week. The EU mission proposed a full renewal of the 1978 cooperation agreement with Syria—a dramatic step providing the country access to development budgets, technical assistance and trade concessions. Alongside this, the EU announced a support package of 620 million euros for 2026-27, part of a wider rehabilitation plan expected to reach 2.5 billion euros. Outside of the West, al-Sharaa received a royal welcome in the Gulf. While Israel celebrated its Independence Day on Wednesday, the Syrian president arrived for an official visit to Saudi Arabia and met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Hezbollah was a key pillar of support for Ahmed al-Sharaa’s predecessor, Bashar al-Assad, and it was ultimately Israel’s crippling of the terror group that afforded the former jihadi the sudden opportunity to race for the grand prize in Damascus. While Israel rightly remains deeply distrustful of its operation’s beneficiary, it’s nice to see the new regime pay us back for the favor. To read the rest of today's newsletter click here https://newsletter.amitsegal.net/p/its-noon-in-israel-schrodingers-ayatollah…

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3:26 PM · Apr 24, 2026

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• Security Incident: Bundestags President Julia Klöckner experienced a compromised Signal account due to an ongoing phishing campaign.
• Attribution Analysis: International intelligence services identify state-affiliated actors from Russia as the entities responsible for the cyberattacks.
• High-Level Risk: The compromise extends to sensitive CDU leadership chat groups, potentially exposing communications involving high-ranking officials including Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
• Official Oversight: The German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has engaged in direct consultations with government leadership regarding the vulnerability.
• Scope Of Exposure: Documented cases include at least 300 victims, involving various members of the Bundestag and specialized security experts.
• Systemic Vulnerability: Security authorities warn that numerous parliamentary group chats are likely being monitored by unauthorized parties without detection.
• Attack Modus Operandi: Adversaries pose as fake technical support to deceive users into disclosing credentials, facilitating full account takeover and data exfiltration.
• Mitigation Efforts: Federal agencies have issued technical guidance and stern warnings to political factions to prevent further unauthorized access to sensitive internal communications.

Bundestagspräsidentin Julia Klöckner ist Opfer der aktuellen Phishing-Angriffswelle gegen Nutzer des Messengerdienstes Signal geworden. Das Signal-Konto der CDU-Politikerin wurde von den Angreifern erfolgreich kompromittiert, wie mehrere Quellen dem SPIEGEL bestätigen. Internationale Nachrichtendienste machen Russland für die seit Monaten laufende Angriffswelle verantwortlich.

Der Vorgang ist hochbrisant und löst bei deutschen Sicherheitsbehörden Alarmstimmung aus. Klöckner bekleidet nicht nur das zweithöchste Staatsamt, sie ist auch Teil des CDU-Präsidiums. Dessen Mitglieder kommunizieren offenbar ebenfalls via Signal-Gruppenchat. Ein Mitglied des Chats ist Bundeskanzler Friedrich Merz.

Nach SPIEGEL-Informationen haben Mitarbeiter des Bundesamts für Verfassungsschutz (BfV) den Kanzler in der Sache bereits persönlich aufgesucht und ihn über den Vorgang unterrichtet. Eine Untersuchung seines Smartphones hat anders als bei Bundestagspräsidentin Klöckner offenbar keine Auffälligkeiten ergeben.

Hohe Dunkelziffer befürchtet

Auf Anfrage des SPIEGEL bei Klöckner teilte die Bundestagsverwaltung lediglich mit, dass sie zu sicherheitskritischer Infrastruktur grundsätzlich keine Auskunft gebe. Eine CDU-Sprecherin bestätigte, dass eine Chatgruppe mit Präsidiumsmitgliedern betroffen gewesen sei.

Ein Regierungssprecher bestätigte nur die bereits öffentlich gewordenen Warnungen der Behörden vor der laufenden Kampagne. Zu möglichen Betroffenen und sicherheitsrelevanten Vorgängen mache er grundsätzlich keine Angaben. Auch das BfV wollte sich nicht zu dem Sachverhalt äußern.

Neben Klöckner gehört mindestens ein CDU-Bundestagsabgeordneter zu den Phishing-Opfern, ein Experte für Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik. Auch das Signal-Nutzerkonto des ehemaligen BND-Vizepräsidenten Arndt Freytag von Loringhoven wurde erfolgreich angegriffen. Laut Sicherheitskreisen sind mittlerweile mindestens 300 Betroffene in Deutschland bekannt.

Erst am Dienstag hatte das BfV die Fraktionsspitzen der im Bundestag vertretenen Parteien und die Parteigeschäftsstellen erneut eindringlich vor der andauernden Kampagne gewarnt.

»Es ist davon auszugehen, dass so zahlreiche Signal-Gruppen im parlamentarischen Raum derzeit von den Angreifern nahezu unbemerkt ausgelesen werden«, hieß es in der 20-seitigen Warnung, die dem SPIEGEL vorliegt, und die Tipps für »akute Gegenmassnahmen« enthält. »Dem BfV sind bereits zahlreiche hochrangige Betroffenheiten bekannt geworden«, heißt es darin weiter. Angesichts der Art der Angriffe sei »jedoch von einer deutlich höheren Dunkelziffer auszugehen«.

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• Phishing-Kampagne gegen Signal-Nutzer: Verfassungsschutz warnt Politiker und Parteien vor laufender Ausspäh-Aktion Von Marcel Rosenbach

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• »Begehrtes Ziel«: Klöckner warnt vor häufigeren Cyberattacken auf den Bundestag

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• Phishingversuche bei Signal-Messenger: Hackerangriffe auf Journalisten und Politiker – niederländische Geheimdienste beschuldigen Russland

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  ](https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/signal-hackerangriffe-niederlaendische-geheimdienste-beschuldigen-russland-a-374baf90-7750-4f9f-bae9-71078e133860 "Hackerangriffe auf Journalisten und Politiker – niederländische Geheimdienste beschuldigen Russland")

Bereits im Februar hatten das BfV und das Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI) erstmals vor der Bedrohung gewarnt  , bei der sich ein angeblicher »Signal Support« bei Nutzern der Messenger-App meldet und sie zur Eingabe von Daten auffordert. Das BSI hat auf seiner Website bereits einen ausführlichen Handlungsleitfaden für potenziell Betroffene  veröffentlicht. 

Bei einer verbreiteten Vorgehensweise der Angreifer meldet sich ein vermeintlicher »Signal-Support« und fordert sie zur Eingabe ihrer Daten auf. Wenn Betroffene darauf eingehen, können die Angreifer deren Nutzerkonten übernehmen – mit gravierenden Folgen. »Sie verlieren den Zugriff auf Ihr Konto und damit die Kontrolle über alle Inhalte der Signal-App inklusive Bildern, Videos, Dokumenten oder Sprachnachrichten«, so die jüngste BfV-Warnung. Gleichzeitig könnten die Angreifer im Namen der Betroffenen kommunizieren, in bestehenden Gruppen mitlesen, neuen beitreten und die Kontakte einsehen.

In den vergangenen Jahren haben russische Staatshacker wiederholt erfolgreich politische Parteien und weitere Ziele in Deutschland angegriffen. 2015 war es ihnen beim sogenannten Bundestagshack gelungen, sensible Daten abzugreifen.

Anmerkung der Redaktion: Eine frühere Version des Textes enthielt noch keine Reaktion der Bundestagsverwaltung. Wir haben diese ergänzt.

• Economic Dominance: American corporations control key pillars of the European economy, including digital infrastructure, artificial intelligence, and payment systems.
• Energy Reliance: The European Union has transitioned from partial energy self-sufficiency to a heavy dependence on imported liquefied natural gas, primarily from the United States.
• Regulatory Consequences: Extensive and complex regional regulations have created high operational costs that impede European startups while American incumbents effectively absorb these burdens.
• Market Fragmentation: The inability of European businesses to scale is attributed to internal market divisions, which prevents the development of local competitors to Silicon Valley giants.
• Self Inflicted Barriers: Restrictive permitting processes and environmental policies have curtailed domestic resource extraction, increasing reliance on foreign providers for gas and critical minerals.
• Financial Dependency: Strategic missteps in policy, such as the regulation-driven sale of the pan-European payments system to an American entity, have codified structural reliance on foreign financial infrastructure.
• Geopolitical Vulnerability: Economic interconnectedness raises risks regarding the potential weaponization of commercial services, such as cloud computing and digital payment access, by foreign governments.
• Policy Paradox: While individual legislative goals concerning privacy, antitrust, and climate change are considered beneficial, their cumulative effect has restricted industrial growth and fostered ongoing institutional subservience.

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It wasn’t long after blue jeans, Hollywood blockbusters and Big Macs crossed the Atlantic last century that some worrywarts started fretting about Europe falling prey to American dominance. What was once a concern about cultural hegemony has of late morphed into panic over commercial dependency. With some justification: the commanding heights of the modern European economy have quietly been captured by American firms. Apple and Google power the mobile phones used from Dublin to Dubrovnik. Other Silicon Valley titans have spawned cloud computers storing Europeans’ data, and from which American artificial-intelligence models are being deployed deep inside the continent’s businesses. Visa and MasterCard, two American firms, are often required for Europeans to pay other Europeans. Increasingly the continent’s lights are being kept on by American liquefied gas, replacing an erstwhile reliance on Russian energy.

This form of economic vassalage, which comes on top of dependency on security matters, is hardly new. “Why can’t Europe build its own Google?” has long been a predictable lament at Brussels confabs. But in an age when such entanglements can be weaponised—not least by Donald Trump and his MAGA clan in America—it also raises geopolitical questions. If Mr Trump really wants Greenland, say, could he threaten to cut off Europeans’ ability to pay in shops, or switch off their iPhones en masse? Could some perceived slight from the German chancellor result in the Mittelstand being shunted off cutting-edge AI models, hobbling their prospects? The possibilities seem, alas, endless.

Here is an uncomfortable truth for hand-wringing policymakers in Paris, Berlin and beyond: Europe’s dependency on America Inc is in no small part Europe’s own fault. Decades of over-regulating the old continent’s economy left businesses there unable to compete with American firms, which went on to trounce European ones even in their own backyards. What Europeans could not build quickly for themselves, due to a thicket of regulations, they often imported just as quickly from abroad. That forcing businesses to jump through endless regulatory hoops would put a burden on Europeans was always understood: meeting ambitious green targets, protecting privacy, preventing bank meltdowns or achieving other necessary goals was always going to carry a cost. But the extent to which it also left Europeans in hock to foreigners—for now mostly America, but also increasingly China—has only belatedly become clear.

Tech is where the dependency seems most acute. Europe has few firms at the forefront of AI, space or high-end computing (one notable exception is ASML, a Dutch firm globally vital to chipmaking). Even governments often have little choice but to use the likes of Microsoft or Amazon for cloud services, Palantir to sift through data or SpaceX to launch military satellites. Quixotic attempts to shake off big tech abound, for example by having civil servants ditch Windows for some clunky substitute. Too often the European alternatives are lacking anyway. It turns out that boasting about regulating AI before the public had made their first ChatGPT query—as the European Union did in 2021—is not conducive to home-growing AI champions.

Yes, EU rules often applied to American firms, insofar as they wanted to offer their wares in the bloc. But regulation in practice hit European firms harder. The costs of administering complex data-protection rules, say, could easily be absorbed by a Google or OpenAI, with their hordes of compliance staff. Not so their European rivals, which have usually lacked scale (if only because the EU’s fragmented single market made it harder for them to grow beyond their home country). The EU thus generated barriers to entry that often ended up protecting American giants.

The sapping of European sovereignty is also evident in finance. European banks requiring dollar funding have long had to enforce Washington’s edicts, for example applying American sanctions. But other dependencies are self-imposed. Several thousand European banks once jointly owned a pan-continental payments system (known as “Visa Europe”; its only American element was the name licensed from the global brand). But well-intended EU regulations that capped the sector’s profits made that business unattractive for the banks, which ultimately sold the business in 2016—to the Americans at Visa. Thus a new dependency was born.

Even less whizzy bits of the economy have regulated themselves into subservience to foreigners. In the 1990s the EU imported just half the natural gas it used, thanks in part to domestic production in places like the Netherlands. A tangle of national and EU rules made it ever-harder to drill; many countries have given up. Today 85% of all gas used is imported, over a quarter from America. Other new industrial projects are often unfeasible to launch in Europe. The EU these days frets about access to critical raw minerals, for which it depends mainly on China. Europe has deposits, but getting the environmental and other permits in place to extract them can take up to 20 years, per the EU’s auditors.

Brussels, we have a problem

The annoying thing is that, taken individually, each piece of euro-regulation is laudable. Yes, Europe should aim for “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050. Of course regulating AI is sensible, lest the robots turn on us one day. Firm antitrust rules enforced by the EU have served consumers well, and so on. But taken together the effect has been a tangle of red tape that has left Europe awkwardly exposed. Efforts are afoot to get to grips with some of the more unappealing dependencies; next month the commission will unveil a “tech sovereignty package”. But it remains to be seen whether Europe can escape its role as a superpower in rule-making, yet a supplicant in everything else that matters.■

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• Model Launch Status: DeepSeek released preview versions of the V4 model following a period of delayed updates compared to domestic industry peers.
• Technical Hardware Validation: The V4 model successfully operates on both Nvidia GPUs and Huawei Ascend NPUs with full-stack support from Huawei.
• Efficiency Architecture: Integration of Sparse Attention technology optimizes processing by focusing on relevant data segments to facilitate handling of extensive documents.
• Competitive Financial Analysis: V4-Pro offers significantly lower costs at $3.48 per million output tokens compared to the $25 rate charged by comparable Western models.
• Capital Acquisition Goals: The lab is actively pursuing at least $300 million in external funding with valuation metrics tied directly to current model performance benchmarks.

By

Tracy Qu

April 24, 2026 1:47 am ET

While DeepSeek repeatedly delayed releasing a major model update, domestic rivals including Moonshot AI’s Kimi, MiniMax, Alibaba Group and ByteDance have aggressively pushed out updates. Leon Neal/Getty Images

• DeepSeek launched preview versions of its V4 model, ending months of silence from the Chinese AI lab.

• The V4 model validated key efficiency techniques on Nvidia GPUs and Huawei’s Ascend NPUs, with Huawei offering full-stack support.

• V4-Pro is cheaper than Western competitors, costing $3.48 per million output tokens, as DeepSeek seeks $300 million in funding.

This summary was generated with AI and reviewed by an editor. Read more about how we use artificial intelligence in our journalism.

• DeepSeek launched preview versions of its V4 model, ending months of silence from the Chinese AI lab.

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China’s DeepSeek launched preview versions of its long-awaited V4 model, breaking months of silence from one of the country’s most closely watched AI labs.

V4-Pro’s agent ability has significantly improved from previous models, the company said on its official WeChat account on Friday. The model is now the “go-to agentic coding model” internally, with feedback showing that it beats Anthropic’s Sonnet 4.5 in user experience and delivering output quality closer to Opus 4.6’s non-thought mode, though it still lags behind Opus 4.6’s thought mode, they note.

The release ends a drawn-out wait for a major update model from DeepSeek. While the company repeatedly delayed releasing a major model update, domestic rivals including Moonshot AI’s Kimi, MiniMax, Alibaba Group and ByteDance have aggressively pushed out updates.

The Chinese company’s V4 model also marks a milestone for domestic chips.

DeepSeek said it validated one of the V4’s key efficiency techniques on both Nvidia GPUs and Huawei’s Ascend NPUs. Huawei said in a WeChat post that its entire Ascend line now offers full-stack support for DeepSeek V4 models.

The V4 model also uses “Sparse Attention,” a technique unveiled last year that enables the model to focus only on the most relevant parts rather than processing everything at once. That enables the model to handle much longer documents, the company said.

While V4-Pro is significantly more expensive than DeepSeek’s previous models, it remains much cheaper than its Western competitors. Anthropic, for example, charges $25 per million output tokens for its Opus 4.6 model, while 1 million output tokens for V4-Pro would cost $3.48.

DeepSeek also launched V4-Flash, a cheaper and faster version that holds its own against the V4-Pro on simpler tasks but trails on more demanding ones.

The startup is seeking at least $300 million in its first external fundraising, and investors have said that the company’s valuation would be pegged to the latest models’ performance, The Wall Street Journal reported.

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Tracy Qu is a reporter based in Singapore who covers Asian equities for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal, with a focus on China and Hong Kong markets. She previously worked as a China tech reporter at the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Tracy graduated from the University of Hong Kong with a master’s degree in journalism.