😸 Elon and Altman go to court

gm legends. It’s Sunday.

We hope everyone is back behind their laptops, because we’ve got some new products for you to try. This week: when to turn your side hustle into a full-time project, how to position your product to benefit from agentic web surfing, the latest on the Elon-OpenAI grudge match, and five of our favorite launches. 

Important stuff is below. Stop skimming and start reading.

P.S. Launching soon? We’d love to hear about it → editorial@producthunt.co 🫶

By Dan Bulteel (founder, Meet-Ting)

“15 years ago, I wrote an article about the rise of a more social web for Huff Post.

“At the time, Facebook was updating its News Feed and bringing Spotify, Zynga, etc. into it. Google was also launching Google+. Obviously, one changed the internet. The other validated it, even if it didn't pay off.

“If you think about that shift, we stopped going to the internet to browse our top 10 sites, and, instead, Facebook became the front door to the internet as things collapsed into a feed.

“It changed how we consumed news, media, and entertainment, which meant it also disrupted the incumbent world order = great swell for startups.

“These days, I'm obsessed with this same opportunity as we move into a more agentic internet. If you've been trying to build something but you're fighting against entrenched user behaviours with a competitor or feel it's just too hard to go up against a giant…well, maybe you have a secret advantage.”

Alex Cloudstar asked: “At what point does a side project stop being ‘just a side project’?”

Bashiri says it’s when he starts feeling a responsibility to take it forward, Tish says it’s when she gets afraid of ignoring it, and Dickemar says it’s when she wakes up and plans her day around it. Perhaps surprisingly, no one has mentioned the financial aspect—it’s all passion, baby. 

When do you give in to your passion projects?

Circle your calendars! 

Elon Musk’s lawsuit against ChatGPT creator OpenAI and cofounders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman goes before a jury in March.

What’s the beef?

Well, Musk, who now runs xAI (and Tesla…and SpaceX…and X…and…), co-founded OpenAI alongside Altman, Brockman, and others as a nonprofit research lab. When it spun off a for-profit company in 2019, Musk cried foul. 

Musk said promises were made and that he put in $38M of his own money based on assurances that OpenAI would stay not-for-profit. He’s seeking monetary damages, but it’s pretty clear that the world’s richest person doesn’t need the money.

OpenAI argues, basically, that Musk, who tried to buy OpenAI last year for $97.4B, is frustrated because he wanted to run OpenAI and that now he has to compete; the lawsuits are fruitless attempts to slow down development.

But OpenAI just can’t stop releasing products. The latest: ChatGPT Health, a specialized space that integrates with health apps so people can understand what’s going on with their body, get individualized diet and exercise advice, and come to medical appointments armed with questions. It hit #2 on Thursday.