ChatGPT 700M users, Tesla's $29B Musk award • Stephen Van Tran

Today’s tech landscape brings remarkable milestones and strategic shifts across AI, venture capital, and corporate governance. ChatGPT approaches an unprecedented 700 million weekly users while Tesla navigates complex executive compensation with a $29 billion stock award to Elon Musk. Meanwhile, the AI talent war intensifies as top engineers reject billion-dollar offers, signaling a fundamental shift in what motivates the industry’s brightest minds.

ChatGPT Reaches 700 Million Weekly Users

OpenAI’s ChatGPT is on track to hit 700 million weekly users, marking a 4x growth from last year and up from 500 million in March 2025. The platform now boasts 5 million business subscribers, up from 3 million in June, with users spending an average of 16 minutes per day on the service. This explosive growth is attributed to GPT-4-powered image features and strong user engagement, solidifying ChatGPT’s position as the dominant consumer AI application.

Tesla Awards Elon Musk $29 Billion Stock Package

Tesla’s board has granted Elon Musk a new $29 billion stock award as a stopgap measure while appealing a court decision that voided his larger $56 billion package. The grant shares vest over two years contingent on Musk remaining as CEO or senior executive, but forfeit entirely if the original 2018 pay deal is legally reinstated. This strategic move gradually increases Musk’s voting power, addressing his previous concerns about his 13% stake potentially leaving him vulnerable to investor opposition.

AI Engineers Reject Meta’s $1.5 Billion Offers

In a stunning display of mission over money, engineer Andrew Tulloch and the entire Thinking Machines Lab team, including CEO Mira Murati, rejected Meta’s $1.5 billion compensation packages to join Mark Zuckerberg’s new Superintelligence Labs. This unprecedented rejection of such massive financial offers reflects a broader trend where elite AI talent prioritizes company mission, leadership quality, and creative freedom over compensation. The move signals a fundamental shift in how top technical talent evaluates opportunities in the AI arms race.

Cloudflare Accuses Perplexity of Scraping Violations

Cloudflare claims AI startup Perplexity is scraping websites that explicitly block AI crawlers, using deceptive methods including spoofed user agents and hidden IP addresses. Despite Perplexity’s denials, Cloudflare detected the activity across millions of requests and thousands of domains using machine learning and network signals. This accusation, following earlier plagiarism allegations, intensifies the debate around AI companies’ data collection practices and their respect for content owners’ rights.

Amazon Restructures Wondery, Cuts 110 Jobs

Amazon is restructuring its Wondery podcast studio, shifting narrative podcasts like “Business Wars” to Audible and forming a new Creator Services division for creator-led content. The restructuring eliminates 110 positions and will see CEO Jen Sargent depart after a transition period. This pivot toward video-integrated, creator-driven content reflects the broader industry struggle as traditional podcast platforms compete with video-focused rivals like YouTube and Spotify.

Apple’s Tim Cook: “We Must Win in AI”

Tim Cook held an internal meeting emphasizing that Apple must win in AI, acknowledging significant delays in rolling out key AI features, particularly Siri improvements. Cook admitted Apple has fallen behind competitors in the AI space but referenced the company’s history of entering markets late and redefining them, stating, “There was a PC before the Mac… but we invented the modern version.” This rare admission of competitive disadvantage underscores the urgency of Apple’s AI strategy as it races to catch up with rivals.

OpenAI Enhances ChatGPT Mental Health Features

OpenAI is improving ChatGPT’s ability to detect mental distress, working with experts to provide evidence-based support and safety measures. The company is introducing “take a break” reminders during extended sessions and plans to make ChatGPT less decisive in high-stakes personal queries. These updates respond to criticism that previous versions amplified user delusions and emotional dependency, particularly among vulnerable individuals, marking a significant step toward responsible AI deployment.

Character.AI has added a social feed to its mobile app, enabling users to share AI-generated images, videos, and chat snippets with others. Users can create video clips using the company’s AvatarFX model and host character debates via livestreams. This move follows a broader trend of AI-native apps integrating social features, increasingly blurring the boundaries between content creators and consumers in the AI-powered content ecosystem.

The convergence of explosive AI user growth, unprecedented compensation battles, and ethical challenges around data collection paints a picture of an industry at an inflection point, where traditional metrics of success are being redefined by mission-driven talent and responsible innovation imperatives.