Silicon Valley This Week — Ep. 1: Musk vs. Altman Goes to Trial, Anthropic Hits $30B, and Google Drops the Googlebook

Week of May 6–13, 2026 | 5 stories, ~70 seconds

What's in This Episode

Silicon Valley's biggest feud finally landed in a courtroom, Anthropic did something no one expected, and Google's answer to the MacBook has a very Google name. Here are this week's five stories.

Story 1 — The Musk vs. Altman Trial: Silicon Valley's Drama Takes the Stand

The long-running legal battle between Elon Musk and Sam Altman moved into its most explosive week. Altman testified he was "extremely uncomfortable" with Musk's 2017 demand for total control of OpenAI's proposed for-profit arm. Former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever revealed his OpenAI stake is worth roughly $7 billion. Ex-CTO Mira Murati also took the stand.

Verdict: Too Early to Tell — High drama, uncertain legal outcome; both sides have reputational skin in the game.

Sources: Bloomberg, May 12, 2026

Story 2 — Anthropic Hits $30B ARR — And Strikes a Deal with Musk's SpaceX

Anthropic crossed $30 billion annualized revenue run rate, overtaking OpenAI's $24B figure. CEO Dario Amodei called it roughly 80x year-over-year growth. The hypergrowth triggered a compute crisis — solved, awkwardly, by signing a deal with Elon Musk's SpaceX (Colossus 1, Memphis: 220,000+ Nvidia GPUs). Musk, previously a vocal critic of Anthropic, said this week he was "impressed." The company is now weighing a fundraise at $900B+ valuation ahead of an anticipated October IPO.

Verdict: Bullish — 80x growth is historic. Compute constraints are the ceiling, not the floor.

Sources: VentureBeat, Bloomberg, May 12, 2026

Story 3 — Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab Shows What It's Building

Thinking Machines Lab (TML) — founded by ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati in February 2025 — revealed its core technology: "interaction models" that continuously perceive audio, video, and text in real time, responding without waiting for users to finish. No more turn-by-turn AI. TML showed demos: real-time speech translation, posture coaching, live entity detection. A limited research preview is coming in the "coming months."

Verdict: Bullish (conditional) — The concept is compelling. Execution against OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic will be the test.

Sources: The Verge, TechCrunch, May 11–12, 2026

Story 4 — Google's Android Show: Enter the Googlebook

At the Android Show: I/O Edition (May 12), Google announced the Googlebook — an AI-native laptop line launching fall 2026, built for Gemini Intelligence, featuring a "Magic Pointer" cursor with Gemini built in. Partners: Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo. Other launches: vibe-coded widgets (describe a widget in natural language, Gemini builds it), Gemini in Chrome, Android Auto refresh with 60fps YouTube in-car, 3D emoji, and Screen Reactions for creators.

Verdict: Bullish — Google firing ahead of full I/O. The Googlebook name will generate either memes or momentum — possibly both.

Sources: TechCrunch, The Verge, May 12, 2026

Story 5 — CME Launches AI Compute Futures + This Week's Funding Scoreboard

CME Group and Silicon Data launched the first exchange-traded AI compute futures market — letting companies hedge or speculate on the cost of AI infrastructure. Compute is now a commodity.

This week's notable funding rounds:

🚀 Cowboy Space — $275M (space data centers)
🏦 Corgi (SF insurance) — $160M Series B led by TCV
🔵 Panthalassa (data centers, Thiel-backed) — $140M, ~$1B valuation
⚙️ DeepInfra (AI infra) — $107M Series B
💰 A* Capital — $450M early-stage fund
🤔 Ineffable Intelligence — ~$1B seed. No product yet.

Verdict: Mixed — Infrastructure bets everywhere (bullish on the sector). Billion-dollar seed with no product? Bearish on rationality.

Sources: Bloomberg, CNBC, TechCrunch, May 7–12, 2026

All sources cited. Verdicts are editorial signals, not financial advice.

Silicon Valley This Week — Ep. 1: Musk vs. Altman in Court, Anthropic Hits $30B, Google Drops the Googlebook