OpenAI’s flip-flop will not get Elon Musk off its back

Call it a rare win for Elon Musk. The world’s richest man, whose business empire has lately taken a beating, has long pursued a vendetta against Sam Altman, boss of OpenAI. In recent months Mr Musk, who helped found the artificial-intelligence (AI) lab but left in 2018, has sought to block its proposed conversion into a for-profit company through various methods, including an unsolicited (and unsuccessful) $97bn bid for the assets of the non-profit entity that controls it.

Mr Musk was thus surely grinning when, on May 5th, Mr Altman announced that OpenAI had abandoned the planned conversion.