Elon Musk on Wednesday visited the Tesla Gigafactory near Berlin, which was forced to halt production last week after losing power during a suspected arson attack.

Pictures show Musk waving to workers as he arrived at the factory in German state Brandenburg and addressing them on stage in a tent where employees gathered to meet him.

Local media also reported that Musk told the crowd “I love you” in German, but that his further comments were drowned out by a factory vehicle parking in front of journalists and blasting music.

Musk is expected to meet regional politicians during his visit to Germany, local media said, citing state government sources. CNBC could not independently verify the reports.

Last week, the Gigafactory was left without power and had to temporarily stop production after a suspected arson on an electric substation close by. Tesla said that the incident was aimed at the company, in a statement on social media platform X.

Left-wing extremist group ‘Vulkangruppe’ claimed responsibility for the attack in a letter posted online, criticizing Tesla’s environmental competencies. Regional authorities are still investigating the case.

The Brandenburg factory is slated for expansion, but the project has met significant resistance from locals and environmental groups, as it would mean the destruction of forests in the area. Activists have set up camp near the factory in protest.

The plant was able to rejoin the power grid earlier this week. Production resumed at the Gigafactory on Wednesday, Michaela Schmitz, chair of the works council at the plant, told local radio channel rbb24, according to a CNBC translation.

Employees received their full salaries during the production outage, she added.

OpenAI executives disputed claims Elon Musk laid out in a lawsuit on Thursday, and said the Tesla CEO is upset that he’s no longer part of the artificial intelligence startup.

“We believe the claims in this suit may stem from Elon’s regrets about not being involved with the company today,” wrote OpenAI Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon in an internal memo on Friday that was viewed by CNBC. “It is deeply disappointing to see Elon take this action against a company he helped start, especially given his close collaboration with some of you who are still here working towards the mission.”

Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and stepped down from its board in 2018, four years after saying that AI is “potentially more dangerous than nukes.”

Musk is now suing Microsoft-backed OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, among others, alleging they abandoned the company’s founding mission to develop artificial intelligence “for the benefit of humanity broadly.”

Since releasing the ChatGPT chatbot to the public in late 2022, OpenAI has become one of the hottest startups on the planet, with a valuation reportedly over $80 billion. The company’s convoluted “capped-profit” structure resulted in Altman being briefly ousted by the board late last year, before an uproar among investors and employees led to his quick reinstatement.

Musk has long wanted recognition for his central role in the creation of OpenAI, and he spent large chunks of the lawsuit telling his version of events. His lawyers said in the suit that Musk was approached in 2015 by Altman and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and agreed to form a nonprofit lab that would develop artificial general intelligence, or AGI, outside of the corporate sphere.

Musk’s attorneys said their client contributed over $15 million to OpenAI in 2016, which was “more than any other donor” and helped the startup build a team of “top talent.” The next year, Musk gave nearly $20 million to OpenAI, which the attorneys reiterated was more than other backers. In total, Musk invested over $44 million into OpenAI from 2016 through September 2020, according to the suit.

Additionally, Musk leased OpenAI’s initial office space “and paid the monthly rental expenses,” the suit said. He was also “present for important company milestones.”

Kwon didn’t dispute Musk’s central role in the early days of OpenAI, but he added some other details. For example, Kwon wrote that Musk at one point indicated he needed “full initial control and majority equity” and later suggested that OpenAI merge with Tesla.

“We did not think either approach was right for the mission,” Kwon wrote.

In the memo, Altman called Musk a hero of his and said the he misses the old version of his co-founder. But he said the company’s mission continues.

While it’s the first time the dispute between the two sides has resulted in a fiery lawsuit, they’ve been at odds for a while.

Before he split with OpenAI, Tesla hired co-founder Andrej Karpathy as senior director of AI. Karpathy returned to OpenAI in 2023. And Musk has been notably vocal in his opposition to OpenAI and its Microsoft partnership in recent years, stating publicly in November that OpenAI had deviated from its original mission.

“OpenAI should be renamed ‘super closed source for maximum profit AI,’ because this is what it actually is,” Musk said onstage at The New York Times’ DealBook conference. Regarding OpenAI’s transformation from an “open source foundation” to a multibillion-dollar for-profit company, Musk said, “I don’t know, is this legal?”

Kwon insisted on Friday that OpenAI is independent and continues to work “to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity.”

Musk’s lawyers didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny and Hayden Field contributed to this report

WATCH: Elon Musk lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman began a year ago

Elon Musk is suing Microsoft-backed OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, among others, alleging they abandoned the company’s founding mission to develop artificial intelligence “for the benefit of humanity broadly.”

In a lawsuit filed Thursday with a San Francisco court, Musk’s lawyers said the tech billionaire was approached in 2015 by Altman and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and agreed to form a nonprofit lab that would develop artificial general intelligence for the “benefit of humanity.”

A co-founder of OpenAI in 2015, Musk stepped down from the firm’s board in 2018, four years after saying that AI is “potentially more dangerous than nukes.”

“To this day, OpenAI, Inc.’s website continues to profess that its charter is to ensure that AGI benefits all of humanity.’ In reality, however, OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft,” the lawsuit filing said.

Musk’s lawyers said in the lawsuit that OpenAI’s focus on maximizing profits for Microsoft breaks that agreement.

“Under its new Board, it is not just developing but is actually refining an AGI to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity,” the filing said.

OpenAI and Microsoft were not immediately available for comment.

Musk’s lawyers said the suit was submitted “to compel OpenAI to adhere to the Founding Agreement and return to its mission to develop AGI for the benefit of humanity, not to personally benefit the individual Defendants and the largest technology company in the world.”

Microsoft, which is facing scrutiny from EU antitrust regulators over its reported $13 billion investment in OpenAI, recently announced a new partnership with French start-up Mistral AI.

The U.S. tech giant said on Monday that it was investing in the company, which is regarded as Europe’s answer to OpenAI, to help it unlock “new commercial opportunities” and expand to global markets.

The legal action pits two of the world’s most prominent tech leaders against each other at a time of extraordinary hype over the future of AI.

Since debuting in November 2022, OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, has taken the world by storm. The AI tool quickly became the fastest-growing consumer application in history and kick-started the launch of rival chatbots from companies such as Google parent Alphabet and Microsoft.

Both Musk and Altman have been making headlines. Musk, considered the world’s richest person, runs electrical vehicle maker Tesla, rocket and satellite maker SpaceX, and bought X for $44 billion in October 2022. He recently reported the advances of the brain chip technology implants produced by his startup Neuralink.

Altman has meanwhile had a rocky relationship with OpenAI. He was suddenly fired from the company in November of last year, in a move that sent shock waves across the tech industry. The American entrepreneur — one of the leading figures in the AI boom — returned to the firm a few days later.

Elon Musk said Chinese electric automakers will find “significant” success outside of China, even as his firm Tesla faces intense competition from these same companies.

“The Chinese car companies are the most competitive car companies in the world. So, I think they will have significant success outside of China depending on what kind of tariffs or trade barriers are established,” Musk said on Tesla’s earnings call on Wednesday.

“Frankly, I think, if there are not trade barriers established, they will pretty much demolish most other companies in the world.”

It’s not the first time Musk has heaped praise on Chinese EV makers. Last year, the billionaire called Chinese EV firms “the most competitive in the world” and said they are likely to be among the world’s top auto companies.

“If I were to guess … probably some company out of China is the most likely to be second to Tesla,” Musk said.

Tesla’s own shares slid in pre-market trade on Thursday, after the company posted earnings that missed expectations and warned of a slowdown in 2024.

The world’s five richest men have more than doubled their vast wealth since 2020, according to an Oxfam report, as the charity calls for curbs on “corporate power.”

The report found that the combined fortune of the world’s wealthiest people — Tesla CEO Elon Musk, LVMH boss Bernard Arnault and family, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, and veteran investor Warren Buffett — has jumped from $405 billion in March 2020 to $869 billion in November 2023. Oxfam used data from Forbes and Wealth X which has not been independently verified by CNBC.

Oxfam’s report was published Monday to coincide with the start of the latest World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, which sees the so-called global elite of top business and political leaders meet in Davos, Switzerland, although the five billionaires named in the report are not due to attend.

Seven of the world’s ten biggest companies have a billionaire as their CEO or main shareholder, the report found. Meanwhile, the world’s richest 1% of people own 43% of global financial assets, according to the research, such as publicly listed instruments like stocks and bonds, along with stakes in privately-held businesses.

“If current trends continue, the world will have its first trillionaire within a decade but poverty won’t be eradicated for another 229 years,” Oxfam said.

The charity also highlighted that net profit among 148 of the world’s biggest companies jumped 52% in the year to June 2023, versus their average profits between 2018 and 2021.

“Extreme poverty in the poorest countries is still higher than it was pre-pandemic, yet a small number of super-rich men are racing to become the world’s first trillionaire within the next ten years,” Aleema Shivji, Oxfam’s interim chief executive, said.

The charity called on governments to reduce the gap between the ultra-rich and the rest of society by “reining in corporate power,” including by breaking up monopolies, capping CEO pay and adding new taxes on permanent wealth and excess profits.

CNBC attempted to approach the individuals named for comment.

Tesla faces a growing revolt in Scandinavia after Danish dockworkers joined a sympathy strike with Swedish mechanics, heaping pressure on the electric vehicle giant to grant collective bargaining rights to employees.

Members of Swedish trade union IF Metall have been at loggerheads with Tesla for six weeks, and have garnered support via secondary strike action from fellow workers across a range of industries in Sweden, including postal workers, painters, dockworkers and electricians.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk bemoaned the blockage of license plate deliveries by postal workers as “insane” and late last month filed lawsuits against both the Swedish Transport Agency and the postal service.

After Swedish dockworkers blocked the reception of Tesla cars into the country, there had been speculation that Tesla would seek to deliver cars to Danish ports and transport them by truck across to Sweden.

However, IF Metall requested support from Denmark’s largest trade union, which on Tuesday announced a sympathy strike.

Jan Villadsen, the the chair of Denmark’s 3F Transport union, said Tuesday that IF Metall and Swedish workers are “fighting an incredibly important battle” and therefore have his union’s full support.

“Just like companies, the trade union movement is global in the fight to protect workers. With the sympathy strike, we are now stepping in to put further pressure on Tesla,” Villadsen said in a statement.

“Of course, we hope that they come to the negotiating table as soon as possible and sign a collective agreement.”

In what appeared to be a direct attack on Musk, Villadsen added that “even if you are one of the richest in the world, you can’t just make your own rules.”

“We have some labor market agreements in the Nordic region, and you have to comply with them if you want to run a business here,” he said.

“Solidarity is the cornerstone of the trade union movement and extends across national borders. Therefore, we are now taking the tools we have and using them to ensure collective agreements and fair working conditions.”

All members of 3F Transport are covered by the sympathy conflict, meaning that dockworkers and drivers will not receive and transport Tesla cars to Sweden.

Swedish labor relations, shaped by a series of accords reached throughout the 20th century, mean that almost all pay is subject to collective agreements between companies and labor unions, without any government intervention.

Tesla has so far refused to sign up to one of these collective bargaining agreements, leading around 120 mechanics in Sweden to launch strike action in late October.

The striking workers are not asking for more pay, but simply for Tesla to honor the principle of collective bargaining. The dispute highlights the potential for an ongoing ideological stalemate not just between Tesla and 120 mechanics, but between U.S. corporate power and the deeply entrenched principles underpinning the Scandinavian economic model.

The extension of solidarity strikes to Denmark could signal further problems for Musk amid the risk of similar solidarity action in Norway and Germany, where collective agreements are also a key tenet of labor relations.

IF Metall told CNBC Tuesday that it has no ongoing talks with Tesla but hopes that the U.S. giant will “return to the negotiations table as soon as possible.”

“We are confident that they eventually will realize that collective agreement is beneficial for them as well. We are prepared for a prolonged conflict, but we are hoping for a swift solution,” the union said.

This report is from today’s CNBC Daily Open, our new, international markets newsletter. CNBC Daily Open brings investors up to speed on everything they need to know, no matter where they are. Like what you see? You can subscribe here.

Spooky OctoberMajor U.S. indexes inched up Tuesday, but ended October in the red — giving them a three-month losing streak. Asia-Pacific markets mostly rose Wednesday, with Japan’s Nikkei jumping around 2.2% a day after the Bank of Japan relaxed its yield curve control policy. South Korea’s Kospi climbed about 1% as the country’s October exports rose 5.1% year on year, its first rise in 13 months.

Watch Janet alongside JeromeThere’s virtually zero chance the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates at the conclusion of its meeting later today. But Chair Jerome Powell’s comments may still have the force to move markets. And market watchers might want to pay more attention to the U.S. Treasury Department’s announcement of the size, and the duration mix, of its upcoming Treasury auction.

China’s high-level meetingsChina concluded a high-level financial meeting Tuesday, where the country signaled support for property developers and resolving local government debt problems. The twice-a-decade financial conference tends to sketch out long-term policy. Separately, U.S. President Joe Biden will meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in the U.S., announced the White House.

Next year will be betterAMD reported third-quarter earnings and revenue that beat expectations. But the chipmaker’s fourth-quarter sales forecast came in at $6.1 billion, below the $6.37 billion analysts were looking for. Nonetheless, AMD thinks 2024 will prove a better year for its artificial intelligence chip business — the firm’s one of the few chipmakers capable of manufacturing the high-end chips that generative AI relies on.

[PRO] A 117-year-old AI companyThere’s an old technology company that was founded in 1906, and which has become a household name. But traders should “rethink” their preconceptions of it, according to one investor. The 117-year-old company is “becoming an AI company. They’re becoming a cloud company,” he said.

The last day of October was sweet for markets, but it was more trick than treat for the rest of the month.

Major indexes managed to finish the day in the green. The S&P 500 rose 0.65% — pulling it out of correction territory, the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 0.38% and the Nasdaq Composite was 0.48% higher.

But this final sprint couldn’t help stocks outrun a dismal October, which was haunted by the 10-year Treasury yield breaching the 5% level for the first time in 16 years. On a monthly basis, the S&P fell 2.2%, the Dow 1.4% and the Nasdaq 2.8%. All three indexes declined for three consecutive months — the first time for the S&P and Dow since March 2020.

In fact, this is just the ninth time since 1928 the S&P has fallen consecutively from August to October, according to Bespoke Investment Group. But history presents a silver lining: The last two times the S&P fell during those months, it rallied 3.42% and 5.99% in the following November, the group said.

The Federal Reserve’s decision on interest rates, expected Wednesday, might give stocks another boost. “If the Fed comes out and says they’re probably done for the year, gives hints that they’re feeling more dovish, that could be one thing that really helps,” said Ross Mayfield, investment strategy analyst at Baird.

And stocks certainly do need help. Even the Magnificent Seven stocks that led most — if not all — the gains in the S&P this year have been struggling in October. Tesla, most significantly, is down 20.5% for the month, while Nvidia has dropped more than 7% and Alphabet’s 5.8% lower. Only Microsoft and Amazon have advanced for the month.

But nothing lasts forever: Even cold November rain may wash away the bitter taste of the past three months.

MUNICH — You’d be forgiven for thinking that the IAA, one of the world’s biggest motor shows, is actually a technology conference, after tech giants like Amazon, Qualcomm and Samsung all showed up for this year’s event.

Their presence underscores demand for traditional automakers to boost the technology in their vehicles, from software to hardware, as they look to catch up with Tesla in the electric car future. Ramping up technology features is also essential to meet buyer expectations in China.

“Tesla and the Chinese start-ups. This is the two-way force they [traditional automakers] are experiencing, driving them to have more user experience in the car,” Mohit Sharma, automotive research analyst at CCS Insight, told CNBC.

They can’t do it alone. Carmakers are looking at tech firms for help, while also trying to work on items like software in house.

Part of Tesla’s global success has come down to its technology in a number of areas, from batteries to Autopilot — its advanced driver assistance system (ADAS), which uses semi-autonomous driving features. The screen within Tesla cars is also akin to that of a smartphone.

Those features are what rival automakers are trying to build and get ahead on.

There are two major operating systems in the smartphone sphere — Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS. That’s not the case in the car world, when it comes to the ever popular infotainment systems and screens.

Auto firms are now focusing on developing their own operating systems, so that using car screens more closely resembles working with the apps of a smartphone.

To that end, Mercedes-Benz revealed further details at the IAA about its self-developed operating system called MB.OS, which will help power various features from the giant screen across the dashboard to the voice assistant in its upcoming EVs.

Swedish EV player Polestar this year created a joint venture with Xingji Meizu — a smartphone maker owned by Chinese auto giant Geely — and plans to launch its own smartphone in December, when the Polestar 4 car begins delivery to customers. Meizu is making an operating system for Polestar cars based on its own product, called FlyMe. The idea is that users would be able to have a seamless experience between the smartphone and Polestar’s operating system in the company’s cars.

U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm was also in attendance at IAA. The company is making a big push into the automotive space, where its chips can be used to help power artificial intelligence applications within vehicles. One example it showed was a car assistant that could find a recipe for chicken enchiladas and add the ingredients to a shopping list. 

It’s not just about the screen — automakers are also looking into using all parts of the car to display information. BMW said the Neue Klasse EV models it unveiled on Saturday will have what it calls Panoramic Vision, a heads-up display which projects information on the windscreen at the driver’s eyeline.

To make the drive as comfortable as possible, U.S. EV maker Lucid showed off the massage feature of the seats in its Air Midnight Dream Edition car.

A big part of the focus of Tesla technology has surrounded its Autopilot ADAS. No car can operate autonomously — at least from a legal perspective — but automakers are ramping up the driverless features and capabilities.

Tesla is perhaps one of the furthest ahead with its ADAS features, followed by young Chinese players like Xpeng and Nio.

Many automakers aspire to become major players in the world’s biggest and highly competitive electric vehicle market, China. In a bid to differentiate themselves from rivals, Chinese firms have talked up the tech features of their vehicles, from software to ADAS capabilities — and Chinese customers expect the latest tech perks.

“It’s not just good enough to bring a great European design to China, you have to be very, very special about what you offer to the market when it comes to software,” Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath, told CNBC in an interview Tuesday.

Heeding that sentiment, foreign companies from BMW to Mercedes are looking to invest heavily in tech development, as they aim to boost EV sales in China.

Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume on Wednesday said that the company is ramping up its number of software engineers in China.

“We want to operate with China speed in China,” Blume said at the IAA conference.

Microsoft‘s co-founder Bill Gates will be meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday, Reuters reported Wednesday citing two sources familiar with the matter.

The meeting will be Xi’s first with a foreign CEO in recent years, the report said, as the Chinese leader stopped travelling overseas for almost three years after China shut its borders during the pandemic.

It could be a one-on-one meeting, Reuters said without revealing details on what they might discuss.

CNBC reached out to China’s ministry of foreign affairs but did not hear back at the time of publication.

The two men met in 2015 on the sidelines of the Boao forum, a gathering for political and business leaders, held in Hainan province. They discussed views on enhancing public health service and poverty reduction, according to China’s foreign ministry.

Gates tweeted Wednesday, saying he had landed in Beijing to “visit with partners who have been working on global health and development challenges” for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It is his first visit since 2019.

The billionaire stepped down as Microsoft’s board chair in March 2020 to “dedicate more time to his philanthropic priorities including global health, development, education, and his increasing engagement in tackling climate change.” He left his full-time executive role at Microsoft in 2008.

Gates’ visit comes ahead of a long-awaited trip by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to China this weekend, aimed at stabilizing relations between the two largest economies in the world.

Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and Blinken spoke Wednesday and “discussed the importance of maintaining open lines of communication” in order to manage the U.S.-China relationship and “avoid miscalculation and conflict,” the U.S. State Department said.

Other foreign tech leaders — such as Apple CEO Tim Cook and Tesla CEO Elon Musk — have met with Chinese ministers in recent months.

In March, Cook met China’s minister of commerce Wang Wentao to discuss China’s reopening and broader supply chain issues. Musk met with Chinese vice premier Ding Xuexiang and other top officials in China in May, as Beijing looks to portray a friendly business environment for foreign companies amid tensions with the U.S. government.

Twitter’s former CEO Jack Dorsey openly criticized Elon Musk’s leadership of the company in a series of social media posts Friday, writing that “it all went south” and Musk “should have walked away” from the acquisition.

Users of Bluesky, a buzzy new social media platform that is being touted as a potential alternative to Twitter, prompted the discussion. They asked Dorsey if he believed Musk was the right leader for Twitter, to which Dorsey replied, “No.”

“No. Nor do I think he acted right after realizing his timing was bad. Nor do I think the board should have forced the sale. It all went south,” Dorsey wrote. He added that he is glad new social media platforms like Bluesky are being built. Dorsey has backed Bluesky since 2019, when he was still serving as Twitter’s CEO.

Dorsey previously called Musk the “singular solution” to take over Twitter. In a tweet from April 2022, Dorsey said he trusted Musk’s “mission to extend the light of consciousness” through the platform.

But a year later, Dorsey’s opinion appears to have soured.

Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has drawn ire for his tumultuous takeover of Twitter, which he acquired for $44 billion late last year. Musk’s steep job cuts, sweeping policy and feature changes have shaken the confidence of advertisers, politicians and celebrities, among others.

Many have publicly announced their decision to leave or reduce their use of the platform, including Elton John, Jim Carrey and MTA, New York City’s public transit agency.

Soon after making a best-and-final bid to purchase Twitter for $44 billion, or about $54.20 per share, Musk tried to back out of the deal he made to buy the company.

He would have had to pay a $1 billion penalty, otherwise known as a “breakup fee,” to do so and prove to a Delaware court that he had a good reason for walking away. While Musk did take the matter to court, he ended up going through with the deal anyway.

Dorsey, who is still a Twitter shareholder, championed the deal at the time. But on Friday, he wrote that things should have gone differently. “I think he should have walked away and paid the $1b.” It is not clear that Musk, or Twitter, even had that option.