Elon Musk and Twitter face San Francisco city probe over headquarters
In an aerial view, a modified company sign is posted on the exterior of the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, April 10, 2023.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Elon Musk and X Corp. — the Musk-backed parent company of social media platform Twitter — face an investigation over building code violations at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters on Market Street, according to online public records with the county’s Department of Building Inspection.
The probe, which was previously reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, follows a lawsuit filed May 16 in Delaware court by six former Twitter employees, who allege Musk’s “transition team” knowingly and repeatedly ordered them to break local and federal laws, including by making unsafe modifications to the company’s office space.
The lawsuit alleges under Musk’s management, X Corp. directed employees to turn rooms in the San Francisco headquarters office into “hotel rooms,” while lying to inspectors and their landlord they were just “temporary rest spaces” with some comfortable furniture added and no substantive or structural changes.
The lawsuit says one employee was told to place locks on the unauthorized “hotel room” doors that did not meet a California code which “requires locks that automatically disengage when the building’s fire suppression systems are triggered.”
The ex-Twitter employee said in the complaint Musk’s transition team repeatedly told them “compliant locks were too expensive” and instructed them instead to “immediately install cheaper locks that were not compliant with life safety and egress codes.”
The employee quit rather than break that law, their attorneys noted in the lawsuit.
The complaint also alleges Musk-led Twitter failed to pay the employees severance, back pay and benefits they were owed, and discriminated against some senior employees on the basis of age, gender and sexual orientation when it decided to terminate them.
Additionally, the lawsuit said Musk and members of his transition team, namely Boring Company executive Steve Davis, ordered employees involved in the management of real estate to slash costs by $500 million as quickly as they could. In the drive to cut costs, the Musk transition team told employees to simply refuse to pay landlords who were owed rent by the company.
When informed of the risks of termination fees for certain leases, Davis told Twitter senior employees, “Well, we just won’t pay those. We just won’t pay landlords,” adding, “we just won’t pay rent,” the complaint says.
Meanwhile, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez is actively courting Musk to move Twitter headquarters to his jurisdiction. On Friday, he wrote on Twitter, “let’s get them to MIA asap.”
CNBC reached out to Twitter for further information and the company responded with an automated response that included a poop emoji but no comment.
A representative for the Department of Building Inspection in San Francisco did not immediately respond to a request for further information.
OpenAI and Advanced Micro Devices have reached a deal that could see Sam Altman‘s company take a 10% stake in the chipmaker.
AMD stock skyrocketed more than 30% on Monday following the news.
OpenAI will deploy 6 gigawatts of AMD’s Instinct graphics processing units over multiple years and across multiple generations of hardware, the companies said Monday. It will kick off with an initial 1-gigawatt rollout of chips in the second half of 2026.
“We have to do this,” OpenAI President Greg Brockman told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” “This is so core to our mission if we really want to be able to scale to reach all of humanity, this is what we have to do.”
Brockman added that the company is already unable to launch many features in ChatGPT and other products that could generate revenue because of the lack of compute power.
As part of the tie-up, AMD has issued OpenAI a warrant for up to 160 million shares of AMD common stock, with vesting milestones tied to both deployment volume and AMD’s share price.
The first tranche vests with the first full gigawatt deployment, with additional tranches unlocking as OpenAI scales to 6 gigawatts and meets key technical and commercial milestones required for large-scale rollout.
If OpenAI exercises the full warrant, it could acquire approximately 10% ownership in AMD, based on the current number of shares outstanding.
The ChatGPT maker said the deal was worth billions, but declined to disclose a specific dollar amount.
AMD one-day stock chart.
The deal positions AMD as a core strategic partner to OpenAI, marking one of the largest GPU deployment agreements in the artificial intelligence industry to date.
AMD CEO Lisa Su told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” that AI is on a 10-year growth path, and “at the end of the day, you need the foundational compute to do that.”
“You need partnerships like this that really bring the ecosystem together to ensure that, you know, we can really get the best technologies, you know, out there,” she said. “So we’re super excited about the opportunities here.”
The partnership could help ease industrywide pressure on supply chains and reduce OpenAI’s reliance on a single vendor.
OpenAI unveiled a landmark $100 billion equity-and-supply agreement with Nvidia nearly two weeks ago, cementing the chip giant’s role in powering the next generation of OpenAI models. That arrangement combined capital investment with long-term hardware supply — though in Nvidia’s case, it was the chipmaker taking an ownership stake in OpenAI.
Shares of Nvidia fell 1% on Monday following news of the OpenAI-AMD deal.
That deal accounts for a dedicated 10-gigawatt portion of OpenAI’s broader 23-gigawatt infrastructure road map. At an estimated $50 billion in construction costs per gigawatt — together with the AMD deal — OpenAI has committed roughly $1 trillion in new buildout spending in just the past two weeks.
OpenAI is also in talks with Broadcom to build custom chips for its next generation of models.
The arrangement between OpenAI and AMD adds a new layer to the increasingly circular nature of AI’s corporate economy, where capital, equity and compute are traded among the same handful of companies building and powering the technology.
Nvidia is supplying the capital to buy its chips. Oracle is helping build the sites. AMD and Broadcom are stepping in as suppliers. OpenAI is anchoring the demand.
It’s a tightly wound circular economy, and one that analysts fear could face real strain if any link in the chain starts to weaken.
For AMD, the partnership is both a commercial milestone and a validation of its next-generation Instinct road map.
After years of trailing Nvidia in the AI accelerator market, AMD now has a flagship customer at the forefront of the generative AI boom.
Su said it creates “a true win-win enabling the world’s most ambitious AI buildout and advancing the entire AI ecosystem.”
It also reinforces OpenAI’s broader infrastructure ambitions.
Through its Stargate project, CEO Altman’s startup is rapidly transforming into one of the most aggressive infrastructure builders in the AI sector. Its first site in Abilene, Texas, is already operational and running Nvidia chips, with construction continuing to expand capacity.
Upcoming builds in New Mexico, Ohio and the Midwest are expected to feature a mix of suppliers, including AMD.
WATCH: OpenAI’s Sarah Friar says ‘full ecosystem’ needs to come together to address compute crunch
Jason Kim, chief executive officer of Firefly Aerospace, center, during the company’s initial public offering at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, US, on Thursday, Aug. 7, 2025.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Firefly Aerospace stock climbed 9% Monday, after the space company said it’s buying defense technology contractor SciTec for $855 million as it looks to strengthen its national security offering.
The deal, announced Sunday, is slated to close at the end of the year and includes $300 million cash and $555 million in Firefly shares.
“These capabilities significantly enhance our ability to deliver integrated, software-defined solutions for critical national security imperatives, particularly Golden Dome,” said CEO Jason Kim in a release.
The company plans to integrate SciTec’s software into its tools. Capabilities such as missile warning, tracking and defense and autonomous command control will also support Firefly’s launch and space services, the company said.
Last week, Firefly shares sank over 20% in one trading session after the company said a rocket exploded during a ground test at its Texas facility. That came shortly after the Federal Aviation Administration cleared Firefly in an investigation over another rocket failure.
Firefly shares debuted on the Nasdaq this summer to strong investor demand. The public listing marked the third significant space tech debut of 2025, and shares surged more than 30% on its first day of trading. The stock has since pulled back.
Firefly carries a growing list of key government and defense partners as it builds its position in the national security space. That includes a recent $177 million contract with NASA and a $50 million investment from Northrop Grumman.
Once the acquisition closes, Princeton, New Jersey-based SciTec will operate as a subsidiary run by current CEO Jim Lisowski.
WATCH: Firefly Aerospace CEO Jason Kim on IPO debut, pathway to profitability
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