Elon Musk’s run as one of the luckiest people in the tech world was extended again Friday as the opera of OpenAI began to play out. Just as X/Twitter's biggest advertisers were abandoning ship amid an(other) apparent endorsement of an anti-Semitic comment by Musk, the sacking of CEO Sam Altman stole the show from Friday onward. It had more twists and turns than an M. Night Shyamalan film—and Musk was on Twitter/X nonstop joking, laughing, and commenting about the situation.
The flood of comments would be expected in any circumstance, given Musk’s ties to OpenAI. (He was a cofounder of the company but left the board in 2018 after a power struggle. Since then, he has taken shots at Altman regularly.) But the rapid pace of change and the media’s fascination with it distracted attention away from Musk’s most recent problems with X and advertising.
