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On May 18, 2026, after a three-week trial, a jury dismissed all of Musk's claims against OpenAI and Sam Altman on statute of limitations grounds. Musk had sought up to $150 billion in damages, alleging betrayal of OpenAI's nonprofit mission. Musk called it a 'calendar technicality' and vowed to appeal. The verdict resolved a major legal overhang for OpenAI's for-profit conversion.

On May 18, 2026 the High Court of Kenya ordered Safaricom to pay 9.9 million Kenyan shillings to a customer over a client data breach, holding that Safaricom could not escape liability by blaming individual employees. The judgment established that companies bear institutional responsibility for documented access controls, monitoring systems, and breach detection. Local commentary described the ruling as exposing systemic failures in Safaricom's customer-data protection regime.

The US Federal Trade Commission opened a formal antitrust investigation into Arm Holdings, notifying the UK-based, SoftBank-majority-owned chip designer in early 2026 and issuing a document-preservation demand, with the probe becoming public via Bloomberg on May 15, 2026. Investigators are examining whether Arm intends to refuse or degrade the quality of its CPU architecture licenses for third-party customers such as Apple, Qualcomm, and Nvidia while simultaneously ramping up its own chip business. The investigation follows Arm's March 2026 announcement of the 'Arm AGI CPU,' a 136-core data-center processor co-developed with Meta -- the company's first production silicon after roughly 35 years as a neutral licensor -- which put Arm in direct competition with its own licensees. Arm shares fell about 8.5% on news of the probe. The investigation follows a related complaint by licensee Qualcomm to competition authorities in the US, EU, and South Korea over Arm's licensing practices.

On May 15, 2026, Jose Luis Bautista, a 25-year-old contractor employee, fell 8 feet from scaffolding at SpaceX's Starbase facility in South Texas and died of blunt force trauma. OSHA opened an investigation. The death came after SpaceX received seven 'serious' OSHA safety citations in the prior year totaling $115,850 in penalties (including failure to properly inspect a crane before it collapsed in June 2025), which SpaceX is contesting. Starbase has previously been documented as SpaceX's most dangerous worksite, with injury rates far exceeding industry rivals.

A California court ruled in May 2026 against Tesla's motion to throw out a racial discrimination lawsuit brought by Black factory workers at its Fremont plant, allowing the case to advance toward a July 2026 trial. The lawsuit alleges pervasive racial slurs, racist graffiti, and segregated work assignments at Tesla's facilities, with the company accused of failing to remedy a hostile work environment despite documented complaints. Tesla has faced multiple similar suits and prior verdicts on these allegations.

A securities class action against Globant alleged the company failed to disclose wage freezes imposed on engineering staff in Argentina and Mexico in late 2023, resulting in widespread employee dissatisfaction, service-quality decline, and client losses that were not communicated to investors. The complaint claims investors suffered damages when the underlying Latin American workforce conditions became public.

In mid-May 2026, pan-African e-commerce company Jumia cut approximately 200 jobs, roughly 10% of its workforce, as part of CEO Francis Dufay's ongoing profitability push. The company framed the cuts around AI-driven productivity gains in back-office and call-center functions, following earlier rounds of cost-cutting and market exits since 2023. The move continued a broader wave of workforce reductions across African tech, but analysts noted the AI framing served to explain a cost-cutting strategy that predated the AI narrative, with Q4 EBITDA results the key test of whether the efficiency claims hold up.

On May 13-14, 2026, after media coverage of his absence from Trump's China delegation, Trump personally called Jensen Huang who then flew to Alaska to board Air Force One. Huang told reporters 'President Trump asked me to come' and praised both Trump and Xi Jinping as 'very inspiring, very welcoming.' The trip raised questions about Nvidia's China business and export control policy given Huang controls 80%+ of the AI accelerator market.

Kenya's High Court (Constitutional Petition E095 of 2026, Justice Bahati Mwamuye) ruled on May 13, 2026 that Safaricom violated the constitutional data-privacy rights of 11 subscribers whose personal information was harvested and offered for sale by a Safaricom employee in 2019. The employee, who had unrestricted access to subscriber records, extracted data on roughly 11.5 million betting-platform customers (names, IDs, mobile numbers, gambling activity, device identifiers, and location data) and attempted to sell it to a rival betting company before informants exposed the scheme. Court records showed Safaricom's litigation team initially denied any breach occurred in a 2019 affidavit, only admitting the incident three months later. The court awarded each of the 11 petitioners KES 900,000 (total KES 9.9 million) and established that data controllers owe a 'positive and non-delegable' constitutional duty to safeguard customer data that cannot be shifted onto individual 'rogue' employees, and that harm need not be financial to be compensable.

After the French Senate unanimously adopted the cross-party Darcos-Ouzoulias bill in April 2026 - which would have reversed the burden of proof in AI copyright-infringement cases, requiring AI companies to prove they did not use copyrighted works rather than creators proving they did - Mistral AI's public affairs director Audrey Herblin-Stoop told the National Assembly's economic affairs committee the bill was a 'litigation bonanza' with 'impossible proof' requirements, warning 'if we face lawsuits, we must be clear: we will struggle to raise funds.' Mistral then conducted an intensive lobbying campaign targeting parliamentary group leaders, including a May 7, 2026 meeting between CEO Arthur Mensch and National Assembly President Yael Braun-Pivet. On May 12, 2026, the bill was kept off the Assembly's agenda, despite a joint call for passage from 81 cultural and creators' organizations and a petition signed by over 25,000 people.

VinFast signed a share purchase agreement on May 12, 2026 to sell its Vietnamese manufacturing arm (VFTP) for VND 13.3 trillion (~$530M) to an investor group led by Future Investment Research and Development JSC, which has ties to Vingroup and founder/CEO Pham Nhat Vuong, who personally takes a ~4.4% stake in the buyer. The price is roughly 5 times an independent Grant Thornton valuation of VND 2.653 trillion (~$106M), and the deal shifts about $6.9 billion of VinFast's debt onto the buyer group, leaving VinFast asset-light. Pham and his son abstained from the board vote citing conflicts of interest, but SEC filings note the transaction can be approved at the shareholder meeting on the strength of Pham-controlled shares alone, without support from other shareholders.

India's National Commission for Women convened a panel (including a retired Bombay High Court justice) that visited TCS's Nashik back office in April 2026 after sexual assault and religious-conversion-pressure allegations surfaced. The panel's 50-page report, submitted to the Maharashtra Chief Minister, found the office's Internal Complaints Committee 'miserably failed' to ensure workplace safety, cited non-compliance with the POSH Act, and called the failures a 'governance failure' rather than a mere compliance gap. Nashik police arrested six people and registered nine complaints. TCS disputed some NCW findings, saying CCTVs were functional and POSH materials were present, and said NCW did not seek company comment before publishing.

In May 2026, a $1 billion Microsoft/G42 data center project in Kenya was shelved after the companies requested guaranteed annual payments from the Kenyan government and the facility would have consumed roughly one-third of Kenya's entire 3,000-megawatt installed electrical capacity. President Ruto explained the energy demands were unsustainable for the country. The incident highlights growing tensions between Big Tech's data center expansion and developing nations' energy infrastructure and sovereignty.

On May 8, 2026, General Motors and OnStar agreed to a $12.75M settlement with California -- the largest CCPA penalty ever. GM collected and sold geolocation and driving behavior data from hundreds of thousands of California consumers to data brokers without adequate consent. This was the first data minimization enforcement action under CCPA, establishing that companies must limit data collection to what is reasonably necessary for the disclosed purpose.

In Muoki & another v Safaricom PLC & another [2026] KEHC 6326 (KLR), the Kenyan High Court found that Safaricom copied software developer Peter Nthei Muoki's 'M-Teen Mobile Wallet USSD Code' to launch its own nearly identical 'Manage Child Account' / 'Manage Junior Account' feature (USSD code *334#) without license or compensation. The court awarded KES 1,400,067,000 (~$10.8M) in general damages plus interest, and ordered Safaricom to pay an ongoing royalty of 0.5% of gross M-Pesa revenue annually, starting from the financial year ended March 31, 2025, for as long as it operates the infringing or substantially similar functionality.

Between spring and mid-2026, Elon Musk directed at least $90 million to Republican-aligned political committees for the 2026 midterm cycle, including $5 million to V-PAC 'Victors, Not Victims' (May 8, 2026), contributions via his America PAC, $10 million each to the Senate Leadership Fund and Congressional Leadership Fund, $5 million to a super PAC backing Vivek Ramaswamy's Ohio gubernatorial bid, and roughly $4.5 million combined to Texas state Republican committees including Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, House Speaker Dustin Burrows, Texans for Lawsuit Reform PAC, and Judicial Fairness PAC.

German translation company DeepL began co-processing customer data on Amazon Web Services servers in 2026, a shift from its previous marketing position emphasizing GDPR-native, Europe-only data handling as a differentiator from US competitors. The company disclosed the change to business customers via email but the change defaults customers into the new routing rather than requiring opt-in, and detailed disclosure of data-routing specifics remained pending after the announcement. The move drew criticism for undercutting the 'European data sovereignty' pitch at a time when European governments and businesses are actively trying to reduce reliance on US cloud infrastructure over CLOUD Act exposure concerns.

ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet joined the chief executives of Airbus, Ericsson, Mistral AI, Nokia, SAP and Siemens in a joint opinion piece published in Handelsblatt, Corriere della Sera and other outlets on May 5, 2026, following a meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The letter called for replacing 'rigid, detailed requirements' in the EU AI Act with 'agile guardrails,' citing compliance work of six to twelve months per new AI system, and urged reduced regulatory burden alongside state-backed industrial policy support.

India's Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) drafted a recommendation in May 2026, reported September 9, 2026, for a detailed investigation into alleged irregularities in Xiaomi's business practices, specifically concerning movement of funds and whether Xiaomi obtained the mandatory foreign-investment approvals required under Indian law. The scrutiny comes amid India's broader tightening of oversight on Chinese investments following 2020 border clashes, and alongside separate tax and royalty-payment disputes Xiaomi is fighting in India.

In May 2026, LinkedIn laid off approximately 875 employees, representing 5% of its workforce. The Microsoft-owned professional networking platform stated the cuts were about focusing on growth areas and team reorganization, and were not AI-related. The layoffs were part of a broader wave of tech industry cuts in May 2026.

In May 2026, Cisco cut around 4,000 jobs as part of a restructuring to redirect resources toward AI. The company's stock surged 15% on the news. This followed previous rounds of layoffs in 2024 under CEO Chuck Robbins. The cuts were part of a broader industry trend: US tech companies announced 38,242 job cuts in May 2026 alone, the biggest month in nearly two years.

In May 2026, Byju's founder Byju Raveendran was sentenced to 6 months in jail by a Singapore court. Court filings revealed $533M (44% of a $1.2B loan) went missing from the company, with a judge ruling that Raveendran's brother transferred funds 'with fraudulent intent' to outside accounts. The Indian Supreme Court rejected Byju's attempts to bypass insolvency proceedings. The company's valuation collapsed from $22B to near zero.

Under Mexico's 2024 platform-worker labor reform reclassifying app-based workers as employees, companies faced their first annual profit-sharing (PTU) distribution deadline in 2026. DiDi refused to distribute payments, stating that 'the companies in charge of complying with labor obligations have not yet completed their first year of operation.' Workers held a nationwide two-hour work stoppage on May 15, 2026 protesting unfair rates and the profit-sharing refusal across Uber, DiDi and (initially) Rappi platforms, demanding a collective labor agreement.

Under Mexico's 2024 platform-worker labor reform (which reclassified app-based delivery/ride workers as employees with statutory rights), companies faced their first annual profit-sharing (PTU - participación de los trabajadores en las utilidades) distribution deadline in 2026. Rappi distributed the mandatory payments to qualifying workers, while Uber and DiDi did not (see related incidents). President Claudia Sheinbaum publicly credited the reform for delivering 'the first time app workers received profit sharing,' though only Rappi actually complied among the three major platforms.

Under Mexico's 2024 platform-worker labor reform reclassifying app-based workers as employees, companies faced their first annual profit-sharing (PTU) distribution deadline in 2026. Uber refused to distribute payments, arguing it had formed a new corporate entity to comply with the labor reform and was therefore exempt from first-year profit-sharing obligations, despite having operated in Mexico for over a decade. Union leader Sergio Guerrero (UNTA - National Union of Application Workers) publicly disputed the exemption claim. Workers held a nationwide two-hour work stoppage on May 15, 2026 protesting unfair rates, wage suppression that keeps drivers below benefit-eligibility income thresholds, and the profit-sharing refusal, demanding a collective labor agreement.

Testifying to the French National Assembly, Mistral AI CEO Arthur Mensch pressed lawmakers to loosen EU AI Act compliance thresholds, arguing the current 'systemic risk model' classification and related compliance burdens fall disproportionately on smaller companies and warning Europe had 'roughly two years' to build sovereign AI infrastructure or become a 'vassal state' dependent on US technology. The testimony continued a pattern of Mistral lobbying to raise the thresholds that trigger the AI Act's strictest obligations.

In May 2026, London Mayor Sadiq Khan's Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) blocked a proposed two-year, up to £50M Metropolitan Police contract with Palantir for AI-driven criminal-investigation data analysis, finding the Met had seriously considered only one supplier and failed to present a procurement strategy for approval - a 'clear and serious breach' of procurement rules. Palantir filed a High Court challenge in June 2026, alleging MOPAC acted unlawfully and irrationally by treating the company's 'values and ethics' as grounds for rejection and imposing an unlawful veto; MOPAC denies ethics were the basis and says the Met's process itself was unlawful and gave 'misleading and/or inconsistent information.' As of September 2026, Khan agreed to have his texts and emails searched as part of discovery, with 12+ MOPAC/GLA officials also designated document custodians; a full High Court hearing is scheduled for January 2027.

On April 27, 2026, over 580 Google employees, including 20+ directors/senior directors/VPs and senior DeepMind researchers, sent a letter to CEO Sundar Pichai urging rejection of classified military AI work. Google is negotiating with DoD to deploy Gemini AI on classified networks where Google cannot monitor usage. Over 100 DeepMind employees separately signed an internal letter demanding no DeepMind research be used for weapons or autonomous targeting. Two-thirds of signatories agreed to be named; one-third remained anonymous citing fear of retaliation.

On April 26, 2026, Elon Musk filed suit against OpenAI, Sam Altman, and Greg Brockman in U.S. District Court (Northern District of California, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers) alleging OpenAI betrayed its 2015 founding mission as a nonprofit. Musk claims the shift to a for-profit model in 2019 was unjustified and that Altman and Brockman 'looted' the nonprofit. Musk's original donation was approximately $44 million; he seeks $134-150 billion to be returned to OpenAI's nonprofit arm. The filing states the 'perfidy and deceit are of Shakespearean proportions.' Hearing scheduled for May 15, 2026.

In April 2026, a US District Court issued remedies in the landmark Google search antitrust case: Google was prohibited from entering exclusive contracts for Search, Chrome, Assistant, and Gemini distribution; required to share its search index and user-interaction data with competitors; and placed under a six-year technical oversight committee. Both sides are appealing -- Google challenging the data-sharing requirement, and the DOJ seeking forced divestitures of Chrome and other assets.