E169: Elon sues OpenAI, Apple's decline, TikTok ban, Bitcoin $100K?, Science corner: Microplastics

OpenAI has clearly met the “multi‑hundred‑billion‑dollar behemoth” condition Chamath described: it was valued around $300B in a SoftBank‑led tender offer in March 2025 and reached about $500B in an October 2025 secondary sale, making it the world’s most valuable private company. (visualcapitalist.com)

On the “tax and structural issues” side, there has been substantial government and legal involvement focused specifically on OpenAI’s nonprofit / for‑profit structure:

• The California Attorney General opened an investigation into OpenAI’s plan to convert control from its nonprofit to a for‑profit entity, sending a detailed letter about charitable‑asset protections and restructuring plans; the investigation was explicitly described as ongoing. (kpbs.org)
• After consultations with the California and Delaware attorneys general, OpenAI revised course: instead of a clean for‑profit conversion, it adopted a structure where its operating arm is a public benefit corporation (PBC) with the nonprofit parent retaining governance control and a large equity stake. This new structure, implemented in October 2025, required and received AG approval. (apnews.com)
• A watchdog group (the Midas Project) filed a formal IRS complaint alleging tax‑law violations and conflicts of interest tied to OpenAI’s nonprofit status and restructuring, but there is no public indication yet that the IRS has opened an enforcement action or brought a case. (aicoin.com)
• Elon Musk’s lawsuits against OpenAI center on claims that it abandoned its nonprofit mission and improperly shifted toward a for‑profit structure; preliminary motions have been decided (e.g., denial of an injunction), but no trial or final judgment on the structural / charitable questions has occurred. (politico.com)

So far, Chamath’s directional view—that once OpenAI became enormous, its structure would attract serious legal and regulatory scrutiny—has been borne out. But his stronger claim that these issues “will get figured out in court” / via government legal action has not yet reached a clear, final resolution: key questions about tax treatment, charitable‑asset valuation, and nonprofit duties remain under investigation or in ongoing litigation, with no decisive court ruling or IRS enforcement outcome on those points as of November 30, 2025. Because the ultimate legal outcome is still open, the prediction is best classified as inconclusive (too early to tell) rather than clearly right or wrong.

Public reporting shows significant pressure on regulators over OpenAI’s nonprofit/for‑profit setup, but no clear confirmation that the IRS itself has launched (let alone “aggressively” pursued) a tax investigation comparable to the Mozilla case.

Key points:

• Investigative reporting based on OpenAI’s IRS tax‑exempt application highlights how far it has shifted from its original nonprofit commitments and notes that nonprofit‑law experts question whether its structure still fits charitable rules, but these pieces do not report any IRS enforcement action—only potential exposure. (apnews.com)
• Other U.S. regulators have opened formal probes (e.g., the FTC’s investigation of OpenAI over privacy and cybersecurity issues), showing substantial federal scrutiny, but this is unrelated to tax/nonprofit status. (foley.com)
• State authorities, especially the California Attorney General, are reported to be examining OpenAI’s conversion and asset-transfer issues, again underscoring legal and regulatory concern over the nonprofit/for‑profit boundary—but that’s state charity regulation, not the IRS. (route-fifty.com)
• In July 2025, watchdog group The Midas Project filed a formal complaint with the IRS alleging OpenAI’s structure and Sam Altman’s dual roles may violate tax‑exemption rules, and multiple outlets covered this and explicitly called on the IRS to investigate. Those stories consistently describe a complaint to the IRS and “calls” for an investigation, not a confirmed IRS action. (themidasproject.com)
• At least one analysis piece frames the situation as OpenAI’s model being “under IRS scrutiny,” but on inspection it is describing the watchdog complaint and possible or hypothetical consequences (“the opening of an IRS investigation could have…”), not citing any official confirmation that such an investigation has begun. (datastudios.org)

Because IRS examinations of specific taxpayers are generally confidential unless they surface through litigation or official statements, the absence of reporting doesn’t prove there is no investigation. Conversely, the available coverage never confirms that the IRS is “on this like crazy” in the way Jason predicted; all we can see is external pressure and speculation.

Given that:

• Sufficient time has passed since March 2024 that such an investigation could exist, but
• IRS actions, if any, are opaque and not publicly documented,

we can’t reliably say whether the prediction is right or wrong based on public evidence. That makes the outcome ambiguous under your rubric.

Chamath framed this as a 5–10 year outlook (“a very bad next 5 to 10 years”), starting from roughly March 2024. As of today (November 30, 2025), only about 1.75 years of that horizon have elapsed, so the full outcome of a 5–10 year prediction cannot yet be judged.

Empirically, Apple’s performance since the prediction does not look “very bad” so far:

• Apple’s stock closed at about $169 on March 8, 2024 and trades around $279 now, a gain of roughly 65% in under two years. (statmuse.com)
• For fiscal 2024, Apple reported $391B in revenue (up ~2% year over year) and net income of about $93.7B, only slightly below the prior year, with profit margins still around 24%. (simplywall.st)
• Apple has continued to set records in Services revenue and posted a new record September-quarter revenue in Q4 2024, indicating ongoing growth engines rather than broad business deterioration. (apple.com)

While these data points suggest the prediction is not tracking as “very bad” so far, it was explicitly about a multi‑year period extending to 2029–2034. Because that window is far from over, the correct status today is “inconclusive (too early)”, not definitively right or wrong.

Available usage data suggest that Apple’s global iOS share has been roughly flat or slightly down since the prediction, but the forecast explicitly referred to gains "over time" / "over the coming years," so it’s too early to judge it as clearly right or wrong.

What the data show so far

• Around the time of the episode (Q1 2024), StatCounter-based summaries put global mobile OS share at roughly 70–71% Android vs ~28% iOS (e.g., Q1 2024: Android 70.71%, iOS 28.54%). (soax.com)
• For 2024 as a whole, multiple StatCounter-derived sources show iOS in the 27–28% range (Android roughly 71%). (goodfirms.co)
• By 2025, StatCounter’s global mobile(-and-console) OS data and derivatives generally show Android ~72–73% and iOS ~27% (e.g., October 2025: Android 72.56%, iOS 26.99%; year-aggregated figures: Android ~72.5%, iOS ~27.0–27.5%). (gs.statcounter.com)

So, compared to the ~27–28% iOS share at the time of the prediction, today’s ~27% level does not yet reflect the clear, sustained "stealing" of share from Android that Friedberg anticipated.

Why this is still inconclusive

• The prediction was framed as a multi‑year structural story (rising GDP per capita in emerging markets + iOS remaining the superior experience → iOS gradually gaining share). That sort of shift would reasonably be evaluated over a horizon of several years, not ~1.5–2 years.
• Over just this short window, market share has been essentially flat with small statistical noise; that’s not strong evidence for or against a longer‑term directional call.

Given the vague time horizon ("over time," "over the coming years") and the modest elapsed time since March 2024, the fairest assessment is that the prediction’s accuracy cannot yet be definitively determined.

• Price target of $100,000+ was reached and exceeded. Multiple independent sources show Bitcoin first moved back above the $100,000 level in early January 2025, trading around $101k–$102k and higher, with mainstream outlets (e.g., Investopedia and Forbes) reporting that BTC “surged past” or “surpassed” $100,000 on January 6–7 and again on January 15, 2025. (investopedia.com) Later in the year, Bitcoin set new all‑time highs around $126k in early October 2025, confirming a sustained move well beyond the $100k level rather than a brief spike. (reuters.com) This aligns with Chamath’s framing that the 2024 bull phase was “just at the beginning” of a larger move toward $100k rather than a complete cycle top.

• The broader bull phase from 2024 clearly carried into the move to $100k+. Articles describing the 2025 price action explicitly connect the six‑figure prices to the earlier 2024–25 bull run, with commentary that Bitcoin had already exceeded prior highs in late 2024 and then advanced into the $100k+ range in early 2025, rather than entering a prolonged multi‑year bear market in between. (forbes.com) That structure matches the idea that the early‑2024 strength was the “beginning” of a larger up‑leg culminating in (and eventually surpassing) $100k.

• Evidence of a social/institutional “tipping point” and mainstream discussion. By mid‑ to late‑2025, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs had attracted tens of billions of dollars in net inflows and grown into some of the largest ETFs in the world, with one BlackRock product alone reaching tens of billions in assets and ranking among top ETFs by AUM. (markets.chroniclejournal.com) Coverage in mainstream financial media and institutional‑flow reports explicitly characterizes this as Bitcoin “going mainstream” and notes that ETF inflows and new highs around $120k–$126k marked a “critical inflection point” where Bitcoin is treated as a mainstream asset class and a cornerstone in institutional portfolios, not a fringe speculation. (ainvest.com) While “everybody really talks about this” is inherently qualitative, the combination of six‑figure prices, constant front‑page financial coverage, record ETF inflows, and broad institutional adoption is strong evidence that the social tipping point Chamath described has effectively occurred.

Given that Bitcoin has not only reached but significantly exceeded $100,000 within the same overarching bull cycle that began in 2024, and that it has clearly crossed into mainstream institutional and media focus, the prediction is best classified as right.

After the SEC approved multiple U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs on January 10, 2024, it went on to approve applications to list eight spot Ether (Ethereum) ETFs on May 23, 2024, clearing the key regulatory hurdle for U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs.(investopedia.com) On July 22–23, 2024, the SEC finalized approvals for these funds to trade, and nine spot Ether ETFs began trading on major U.S. exchanges (Nasdaq, NYSE Arca, and Cboe BZX), including products from BlackRock, Fidelity, VanEck, Bitwise, Grayscale and others.(investors.com) Individual issuers confirm that their U.S.-listed Ethereum ETFs, such as VanEck’s ETHV on Cboe BZX and Bitwise’s ETHW on NYSE Arca, provide direct (spot) ether exposure and launched in mid‑2024.(vaneck.com) This matches the normalized prediction that, following the approval of U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs, at least one U.S. spot Ethereum ETF would also be approved by the SEC and trade in ETF form on major U.S. exchanges, so the prediction is right.