No. 30 Coffee Lounge in Brandon, Suffolk, recently welcomed Alphonso that has the capability of serving and interacting with customers.

Manager Nicki Plume said it had become the talk of her customers and the robot had been “very helpful”.

She stressed however he was not there to replace staff.

“It’s just helpful for the girls during the day and we open in evenings as an Italian restaurant, so it’s helpful to bring the food over, clearing the tables,” she explained.

“He’s not going to replace anyone, he’s just helping.

“The kids really like him… we were the talk of the old people’s home as well they were talking about him down there, so we’ve had lots of old people come in and ask to be served by Alphonso.”

Other restaurants across the country are using similar robots, which can in some cases cost about £18,500 to buy.

It is not just robots changing our High Streets however, as even more technology influences consumer habits and experiences.

Digital Ipswich Innovation Showcase has been taking place, showing how technology can “revitalise” town centres through artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR).

James Lee Burgess, 51, is the founder of Urban Tech Creative and attended the event to give visitors the chance to experience a ‘phygital’ – physical and digital – retail experience through headsets.

“The idea is we have digital content for brands that can be provided anywhere or any place using [an empty shelf] as a backdrop.”

He likened it to “an infinite shop front” enabling a number of brands to show their products through the headsets.

Also at the Ipswich event was Nana Parry, 38, co-founder of Cluso.

It is a tool that makes it easier for the public to give feedback on consumer experiences through voice note recordings, which he believed could improve Ipswich.

“One of the great things about Ipswich is everything in terms of regeneration,” he said.

“So we know that it’s really important to get people back into the towns, experiencing the High Street.

“One of the ways of doing that is by using Cluso, getting the public to share exactly what they want from these experiences.”

Jack Norris, 35, is director of Zubr, offering people the chance to experience AR and VR through digital binoculars.

It was being used at the Ipswich event to show what the town’s waterfront may have looked like during the 1890s.

He believed the technology could become “street furniture”, giving visitors looks into the past.

“The very familiar looking nature of it also appeals to older people who perhaps would never install a 3D app on a phone.

“They’ll just come and have a look through it thinking they might see the real world and being surprised hopefully impressed by seeing our historical visuals instead.”

But this was not an AI showroom or laboratory – this robot was living on a coffee table in a Beijing apartment, along with Timmy.

The first night it came home, Timmy hugged his little robot friend before heading to bed. He doesn’t have a name for it – yet.

“It’s like a little teacher or a little friend,” the boy said, as he showed his mum the next move he was considering on the chess board.

Moments later, the robot chimed in: “Congrats! You win.” Round eyes blinking on the screen, it began rearranging the pieces to start a new game as it continued in Mandarin: “I’ve seen your ability, I will do better next time.”

China is embracing AI in its bid to become a tech superpower by 2030.

DeepSeek, the breakthrough Chinese chatbot that caught the world’s attention in January, was just the first hint of that ambition.

Money is pouring into AI businesses seeking more capital, fuelling domestic competition. There are more than 4,500 firms developing and selling AI, schools in the capital Beijing are introducing AI courses for primary and secondary students later this year, and universities have increased the number of places available for students studying AI.

“This is an inevitable trend. We will co-exist with AI,” said Timmy’s mum, Yan Xue. “Children should get to know it as early as possible. We should not reject it.”

She is keen for her son to learn both chess and the strategy board game Go – the robot does both, which persuaded her that its $800 price tag was a good investment. Its creators are already planning to add a language tutoring programme.

Perhaps this was what the Chinese Communist Party hoped for when it declared in 2017 that AI would be “the main driving force” of the country’s progress. President Xi Jinping is now betting big on it, as a slowing Chinese economy grapples with the blow of tariffs from its biggest trading partner, the United States.

Beijing plans to invest 10tn Chinese yuan ($1.4tn; £1tn) in the next 15 years as it competes with Washington to gain the edge in advanced tech. AI funding got yet another boost at the government’s annual political gathering, which is currently under way. This comes on the heels of a 60 billion yuan-AI investment fund created in January, just days after the US further tightened export controls for advanced chips and placed more Chinese firms on a trade blacklist.

But DeepSeek has shown that Chinese companies can overcome these barriers. And that’s what has stunned Silicon Valley and industry experts – they did not expect China to catch up so soon.

It’s a reaction Tommy Tang has become accustomed to after six months of marketing his firm’s chess-playing robot at various competitions.

Timmy’s machine comes from the same company, SenseRobot, which offers a wide range in abilities – Chinese state media hailed an advanced version in 2022 that beat chess Grand Masters at the game.

“Parents will ask about the price, then they will ask where I am from. They expect me to come from the US or Europe. They seem surprised that I am from China,” Mr Tang said, smiling. “There will always be one or two seconds of silence when I say I am from China.”

His firm has sold more than 100,000 of the robots and now has a contract with a major US supermarket chain, Costco.

One of the secrets to China’s engineering success is its young people. In 2020, more than 3.5 million of the country’s students graduated with degrees in science, technology, engineering and maths, better known as STEM.

That’s more than any other country in the world – and Beijing is keen to leverage it. “Building strength in education, science and talent is a shared responsibility,” Xi told party leaders last week.

Ever since China opened its economy to the world in the late 1970s, it has “been through a process of accumulating talent and technology,” says Abbott Lyu, vice-president of Shanghai-based Whalesbot, a firm that makes AI toys. “In this era of AI, we’ve got many, many engineers, and they are hardworking.”

Behind him, a dinosaur made of variously coloured bricks roars to life. It’s being controlled through code assembled on a smartphone by a seven-year-old.

The company is developing toys to help children as young as three learn code. Every package of bricks comes with a booklet of code. Children can then choose what they want to build and learn how to do it. The cheapest toy sells for around $40.

“Other countries have AI education robots as well, but when it comes to competitiveness and smart hardware, China is doing better,” Mr Lyu insists.

The success of DeepSeek turned its CEO Liang Wenfeng into a national hero and “is worth 10 billion yuan of advertising for [China’s] AI industry,” he added.

“It has let the public know that AI is not just a concept, that it can indeed change people’s lives. It has inspired public curiosity.”

Six homegrown AI firms, including DeepSeek, have now been nicknamed China’s six little dragons by the internet – the others are Unitree Robotics, Deep Robotics, BrainCo, Game Science, and Manycore Tech.

Some of them were at a recent AI fair in Shanghai, where the biggest Chinese firms in the business showed off their advances, from search and rescue robots to a backflipping dog-like one, which wandered the halls among visitors.

In one bustling exhibition hall, two teams of humanoid robots battled it out in a game of football, complete in red and blue jerseys. The machines fell when they clashed – and one of them was even taken off the field in a stretcher by their human handler who was keen to keep the joke going.

It was hard to miss the air of excitement among developers in the wake of DeepSeek. “Deepseek means the world knows we are here,” said Yu Jingji, a 26-year-old engineer.

But as the world learns of China’s AI potential, there are also concerns about what AI is allowing the Chinese government to learn about its users.

AI is hungry for data – the more it gets, the smarter it makes itself and, with around a billion mobile phone users compared to just over 400 million in the US, Beijing has a real advantage.

The West, its allies and many experts in these countries believe that data gathered by Chinese apps such as DeepSeek, RedNote or TikTok can be accessed by the Chinese Communist Party. Some point to the country’s National Intelligence Law as evidence of this.

But Chinese firms, including ByteDance, which owns TikTok, says the law allows for the protection of private companies and personal data. Still, suspicion that US user data on TikTok could end up in the hands of the Chinese government drove Washington’s decision to ban the hugely popular app.

That same fear – where privacy concerns meet national security challenges – is hitting Deepseek. South Korea banned new downloads of DeepSeek, while Taiwan and Australia have barred the app from government-issued devices.

Chinese companies are aware of these sensitivities and Mr Tang was quick to tell the BBC that “privacy was a red line” for his company. Beijing also realises that this will be a challenge in its bid to be a global leader in AI.

“DeepSeek’s rapid rise has triggered hostile reactions from some in the West,” a commentary in the state-run Beijing Daily noted, adding that “the development environment for China’s AI models remains highly uncertain”.

But China’s AI firms are not deterred. Rather, they believe thrifty innovation will win them an undeniable advantage – because it was DeepSeek’s claim that it could rival ChatGPT for a fraction of the cost that shocked the AI industry.

So the engineering challenge is how to make more, for less. “This was our Mission Impossible,” Mr Tang said. His company found that the robotic arm used to move chess pieces was hugely expensive to produce and would drive the price up to around $40,000.

So, they tried using AI to help do the work of engineers and enhance the manufacturing process. Mr Tang claims that has driven the cost down to $1,000.

“This is innovation,” he says. “Artificial engineering is now integrated into the manufacturing process.”

This could have enormous implications as China applies AI on a vast scale. State media already show factories full of humanoid robots. In January, the government said that it would promote the development of AI-powered humanoid robots to help look after its rapidly ageing population.

Xi has repeatedly declared “technological self-reliance” a key goal, which means China wants to create its own advanced chips, to make up for US export restrictions that could hinder its plans.

The Chinese leader knows he is in for a long race – the Beijing Daily recently warned that the DeepSeek moment was not a time for “AI triumphalism” because China was still in “catch-up mode”.

President Xi is investing heavily in artificial intelligence, robots and advanced tech in preparation for a marathon that he hopes China will eventually win.

Sales of the firm’s chips hit more than $39bn (£30.7bn) over the three months ended 27 January, up 74% year-on-year.

Nvidia has seen a surge of demand, as big tech companies turn to the firm for chips that can handle the large amounts of data used to train AI models.

But DeepSeek said it had trained its chatbot using less advanced, and less expensive chips.

Its launch prompted a sharp sell-off in Nvidia shares earlier this month, a hit felt throughout the market.

Investors calmed after big companies such as Facebook owner Meta said they expected to continue their current AI investment strategies.

Nvidia boss Jensen Huang said he was not worried that demand would suddenly shift, saying that software in the future would be created by machine learning that needs chips with different architecture than the “hand-coding” of the past.

“We know fundamentally software has changed,” he said, adding that it was also still “early days” for the use of AI to spread.

Nvidia currently dominates the market in advanced chips, making it central to the boom in AI investment at companies such as Microsoft.

Its shares have surged more than 400% over the last two years, giving the company a market value of more than $3tn.

Nvidia said it was focused on rapidly building out production of its latest chips, known as Blackwell, which helped to drive a surge in the firm’s revenue.

The company’s finance chief Collette Kress said its AI data centre business was strongest in the US, but the firm was also seeing demand grow in other parts of the world, pointing to investments by France and the European Union.

She said demand in China – where US trade controls have blocked the firm from exporting certain chips – remained lower and that the firm expected shipments to remain roughly at the current level.

Under the new proposals, AI developers will be able to use creators’ content on the internet to help develop their models, unless the rights holders elect to “opt out”.

The artists hope the album, entitled Is This What We Want?, will draw attention to the potential impact on livelihoods and the UK music industry.

All profits will be donated to the charity Help Musicians.

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“In the music of the future, will our voices go unheard?” Kate Bush said in a statement.

A public consultation on the legal changes closes later on Tuesday.

The album – also backed by the likes of Billy Ocean, Ed O’Brien of Radiohead and Bastille’s Dan Smith, as well as The Clash, Mystery Jets and Jamiroquai – features sound recordings of empty studios and performance spaces, demonstrating what the artists fear is the potential impact of the proposed law change.

The track listing for the record simply spells out the message: “The British government must not legalise music theft to benefit AI companies.”

The government is currently consulting on proposals that would allow AI companies to use material that is available online without respecting copyright if they are using it for text or data mining.

Generative AI programmes mine, or learn, from vast amounts of data like text, images, or music online to generate new content which feels like it has been made by a human.

The proposals would give artists or creators a so-called “rights reservation” – the ability to opt out.

But critics of the plan believe it is not possible for an individual writer or artist to notify thousands of different AI service providers that they do not want their content used in that way, or to monitor what has happened to their work across the whole internet.

A spokesman for the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) said in a statement on Tuesday that the UK’s “current regime for copyright and AI is holding back the creative industries, media and AI sector from realising their full potential – and that cannot continue”.

“That’s why we have been consulting on a new approach that protects the interests of both AI developers and right holders and delivers a solution which allows both to thrive.

“We have engaged extensively with these sectors throughout and will continue to do so.”

They added that “no decisions have been taken” and “no moves will be made until we are absolutely confident we have a practical plan that delivers each of our objectives.

Imogen Heap, Yusuf aka Cat Stevens and Riz Ahmed have also backed the silent album release as well as Tori Amos and Hans Zimmer.

Composer Max Richter, another of the artists involved in the album, noted how the plans not only have an impact on musicians but “impoverish creators” across the board, from writers to visual artists and beyond.

In 2023, UK music contributed a record £7.6 billion to the economy.

Organiser of the silent record, Ed Newton-Rex, said the proposals were not only “disastrous for musicians” in the UK but also “totally unnecessary”, as the country can be “leaders in AI without throwing our world-leading creative industries under the bus”.

He said the new record showed that “however the government tries to justify it, musicians themselves are united in their thorough condemnation of this ill-thought-through plan.”

Singer-songwriter Naomi Kimpenu added: “We cannot be abandoned by the government and have our work stolen for the profit of big tech.”

She said the plans would “shatter the prospects of so many emerging artists in the UK”.

In January, Sir Paul McCartney told the BBC the proposed changes to copyright law could allow “rip off” technology that might make it impossible for musicians and artists to make a living.

In a letter to The Times, published on Monday, signatories including Sir Paul, Lord Lloyd Webber and Sir Stephen Fry said that changes to the law will allow big tech to raid the creative sectors.

They were joined by the likes of Bush, Ed Sheeran, Dua Lipa and Sting in opposing plans to change copyright laws.

On Tuesday, the UK’s creative industries launched a campaign to highlight how their content is at risk of being given away for free to AI firms.

The Make it Fair campaign, which includes wrap-around adverts in national newspapers, is urging people to write to their MPs to object to the government’s plans.

“The reduction in workforce will come from natural attrition as temporary and contract roles roll off over the next few years,” a DBS spokesperson told the BBC.

Permanent staff are not expected to be affected by the cuts. The bank’s outgoing chief executive Piyush Gupta also said it expects to create around 1,000 new AI-related jobs.

It makes DBS one of the first major banks to offer details on how AI will affect its operations.

The company did not say how many jobs would be cut in Singapore or which roles would be affected.

DBS currently has between 8,000 and 9,000 temporary and contract workers. The bank employs a total of around 41,000 people.

Last year, Mr Gupta said DBS had been working on AI for over a decade.

“We today deploy over 800 AI models across 350 use cases, and expect the measured economic impact of these to exceed S$1bn ($745m; £592m) in 2025,” he added.

Mr Gupta is set to leave the firm at the end of March. Current deputy chief executive Tan Su Shan will replace him.

The ongoing proliferation of AI technology has put its benefits and risks under the spotlight, with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) saying in 2024 that it is set to affect nearly 40% of all jobs worldwide.

The IMF’s managing director Kristalina Georgieva said that “in most scenarios, AI will likely worsen overall inequality”.

The governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, told the BBC last year that AI will not be a “mass destroyer of jobs” and human workers will learn to work with new technologies.

Mr Bailey said that while there are risks with AI, “there is great potential with it”.

Part of the Cornwall Festival of Tech, the sell out event ‘Ameca: A Robot’s Journey to Creation’ saw about 250 participants attend Truro College to explore tech workshops, exhibits, and talks.

The robot has made several appearance at events across the world, but the festival in Cornwall was the first chance for the public to see it up close.

Some festival-goers said they were “gobsmacked” by its range of expressions while others found it “disconcerting.”

Will Jackson, CEO of Falmouth based Engineered Arts, which created Ameca, said its facial expressions and gestures made it standout from other advanced humanoid robots.

Mr Jackson said his team had focused on how the robot communicates to help with its purpose as a platform for artificial intelligence development.

“The human face is one of the highest bandwidth communication tools, you can get a lot of information over,” he said.

“You’re nodding your head a little bit, you’re making eye contact, your eyebrows raise a little bit, I can read a thousand words into every little gesture.

“If we can bring that kind of capability to a robot it would make our communication so much more human-like, so that’s the idea.”

Mr Jackson said Ameca had deliberately been designed not to look too realistic.

“You’ll find the more it looks like people the more acceptable it becomes, up until a point where it gets very, very close.

“Then you get a big dip and people go ‘I don’t like that’.

“It’s at that point that you’ve started to blur the line between what’s human and what’s robot.”

One woman at the Cornwall Festival of Tech told BBC Spotlight that Ameca was “a little bit disconcerting” due to how its robotic facial muscles moved and how human-like its hands were.

A man at the festival said he was “gobsmacked” by the “amazing” robot and that he was impressed that it was made in Cornwall.

Professor José R Penadés and his team at Imperial College London had spent years working out and proving why some superbugs are immune to antibiotics.

He gave “co-scientist” – a tool made by Google – a short prompt asking it about the core problem he had been investigating and it reached the same conclusion in 48 hours.

He told the BBC of his shock when he found what it had done, given his research was not published so could not have been found by the AI system in the public domain.

“I was shopping with somebody, I said, ‘please leave me alone for an hour, I need to digest this thing,'” he told the Today programme, on BBC Radio Four.

“I wrote an email to Google to say, ‘you have access to my computer, is that right?'”, he added.

The tech giant confirmed it had not.

The full decade spent by the scientists also includes the time it took to prove the research, which itself was multiple years.

But they say, had they had the hypothesis at the start of the project, it would have saved years of work.

Prof Penadés’ said the tool had in fact done more than successfully replicating his research.

“It’s not just that the top hypothesis they provide was the right one,” he said.

“It’s that they provide another four, and all of them made sense.

“And for one of them, we never thought about it, and we’re now working on that.

The researchers have been trying to find out how some superbugs – dangerous germs that are resistant to antibiotics – get created.

Their hypothesis is that the superbugs can form a tail from different viruses which allows them to spread between species.

Prof Penadés likened it to the superbugs having “keys” which enabled them to move from home to home, or host species to host species.

Critically, this hypothesis was unique to the research team and had not been published anywhere else. Nobody in the team had shared their findings.

So Mr Penadés was happy to use this to test Google’s new AI tool.

Just two days later, the AI returned a few hypotheses – and its first thought, the top answer provided, suggested superbugs may take tails in exactly the way his research described.

The impact of AI is hotly contested.

Its advocates say it will enable scientific advances – while others worry it will eliminate jobs.

Prof Penadés said he understood why fears about the impact on jobs such as his was the “first reaction” people had but added “when you think about it it’s more that you have an extremely powerful tool.”

He said the researchers on the project were convinced that it would prove very useful in the future.

“I feel this will change science, definitely,” Mr Penadés said.

“I’m in front of something that is spectacular, and I’m very happy to be part of that.

“It’s like you have the opportunity to be playing a big match – I feel like I’m finally playing a Champions League match with this thing.”

The iPhone 16e has the same processor as the more expensive iPhone 16, Apple said, with similar storage options, though a lower spec elsewhere, including fewer cameras.

Apple has been struggling to find a new product that excites consumers – sales of iPhones dropped at the end of last year.

It will be hoping that bringing enhanced AI functionality to a less expensive phone will address that – however analysts have been cautious about the sales boost such tools bring.

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Its name is clearly a nod to its iPhone SE series, which were released from 2016 to 2022, and were also lower priced.

Apple said the iPhone 16e would be available for pre-order from 21 February in 59 countries.

It will launch in the UK for £599, which is £200 less than the iPhone 16 – but more than double the price of the original iPhone SE went for when it launched in 2016.

“This now becomes one of the most affordable powerful iPhones now on the market,” industry analyst Paolo Pescatore told BBC News.

“The move should help accelerate adoption and especially its foray into AI with Apple Intelligence.”

However other experts have questioned how much value consumers put on AI – an area Apple has spent $189bn (£150bn) on in the last decade.

“All we have to show for that is the HomePod and $3,500 ski goggles,” said Cory Johnson, Epistrophy Capital Research chief market strategist, referring to Apple’s Vision Pro headset, which has not sold many units.

“AI should be right in Apple’s wheelhouse. But Apple fanboys, fangirls, and investors are right to be disappointed so far,” Mr Johnson added.

Meanwhile, tech influencer Marques Brownlee said in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that the “most lowkey interesting thing” about the iPhone 16e was its new C1 modem.

It is the first time Apple has used its own modem design for the iPhone, having previously relied on Qualcomm and Intel’s chips to provide cellular connectivity.

This also meant paying costly licensing fees to those chip giants – something Apple has previously wrangled over with Qualcomm in court.

Adopting its own modems would also help the tech giant realise a vision laid out by chief executive Tim Cook in 2009 of owning and controlling the tech powering its products.

Much of the conversation around the new handset will probably centre around its power, with Apple electing to use the same A18 chip behind its more expensive devices.

This means the 16e will be capable of playing the same games and running the same apps as other iPhones – though AI is almost certainly at the heart of this decision.

Mr Cook said in the announcement the new model featured “the performance, intelligence and privacy” Apple fans “expect” from the firm.

And he said the Apple Intelligence features on the device would “help you save time, quickly get more things done, and express yourself in new ways”.

The firm introduced its spin on the tech – Apple Intelligence – with this series of devices, which includes new tools for writing and incorporating OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT into Siri.

It hasn’t always gone well, with the firm at one point suspending its AI-generated news alerts after they created false headlines attributed to news organisations including the BBC.

It now presents the summaries in italics.

Apple said its new phone is “built for Apple Intelligence”, and pointed to certain features of the tech, like an easy way to clean up photos or search your image library.

Other phone manufacturers have similar features on their devices – though the iPhone 16e will be by far the cheapest way to access AI on an Apple handset.

“The iPhone 16e generates a new revenue stream for Apple, and this will be particularly noticeable in key markets like India, where iPhones are out of reach for most people,” said Forrester principal analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee.

“There is also a second-order effect of cheaper devices like the iPhone 16e, bringing new customers into the Apple ecosystem,” he added.

The tech giant also appears to aiming its new handset at owners of older models, in the hope of boosting upgrades.

A graphic on its website says “there’s never been a better time to upgrade” and allows users to compare the iPhone 16e’s specs to models dating back to 2019.

“We’ve seen a limited appetite among many of the installed base to upgrade from previous versions, but the new phone reduces the cost hurdle of joining the Apple Intelligence bandwagon,” said Mr Chatterjee.

Napier AI provides technology to help banks and other financial institutions detect and prevent criminal behaviour, such as money laundering.

The firm, which was founded in 2015 and employs 250 people, moved into its new office at Pearl Assurance in the city centre last week.

Twenty-five of the 106 new jobs are already in place, with the remaining roles expected to be filled by 2027.

The new roles come with average salaries of more than £46,000.

Once the jobs are filled, Napier AI said it will contribute almost £5m in additional salaries to the Northern Ireland economy.

Greg Watson, chief executive of Napier AI, said the company’s mission is to tackle what he describes as a “blight in society” – money laundering.

“Money laundering is incredibly successful unfortunately,” he said.

“3.2 trillion dollars a year is laundered, so we’re trying to bring automation AI to try and solve that and we feel like we’re making a big difference.”

Mr Watson said the firm’s decision to expand into Northern Ireland followed a “really extensive search globally” on locations, including Warsaw, Porto and Lisbon.

“We felt there was talent pools we could tap and we looked at about 12 different countries,” he said.

“We looked at the talent and some of the benefits here, the location, the language, the whole thing and we’re super excited about growing a presence here.”

Mr Watson said the roles include high-end research and development positions.

“A lot of AI skills, a lot of development skills. We believe the talent coming out of the universities and the talent in the general area is super impressive and we feel like we’re going to have a big future here.”

Economy Minister Caoimhe Archibald said the announcement of about £10m in investment by the company is a “vote of confidence” for Northern Ireland.

“These are high-tech jobs in what is a priority sector for us as an executive, and they really closely align with what we’re trying to achieve in terms of our economic vision,” she told BBC News NI.

“It’s an exciting company that has chosen to base itself here in Belfast because of what we have to offer in terms of a location, but also that skill talent pool that is coming through our universities and colleges, so this is a really positive announcement.”

Invest NI’s chief executive Kieran Donoghue said it was “wonderful news” for Northern Ireland.

The creation of “very high quality jobs” in data science, software engineering and professional services would help raise Northern Ireland’s profile to other tech companies, he added.

But the unsolicited bid might not be a failure – at least as far as Musk is concerned, experts say.

That’s because the offer could still complicate CEO Sam Altman’s plans to transform OpenAI from a non-profit controlled entity to a for-profit company.

Musk is “basically trying to stymie OpenAI’s growth trajectory,” said University of Cambridge associate teaching professor Johnnie Penn in an interview with the BBC.

Profit & non-profit

Last week, Musk and a consortium of investors including Hollywood superagent Ari Emanuel tabled a $97.4bn (£78.4bn) offer for all of OpenAI’s assets.

It was a huge sum – but less than the $157bn the firm was valued at in a funding round just four months ago, and much lower than the $300bn that some think it is worth now.

Complicating all of this is OpenAI’s unusual structure which involves a partnership between non-profit and for-profit arms.

Mr Altman is understood to want to change that, stripping it of its non-profit board.

That involves costs which Mr Musk is seemingly trying to inflate.

“What Musk is trying to do here is raise the perceived value of the non-profit arm of OpenAI, so that OpenAI has to pay more to get out of the obligations it has to its own non-profit,” said Dr Penn.

The value of its non-profit assets isn’t clear. With his bid, Musk was floating a price, according to Cornell University senior lecturer Lutz Finger, who is also the founder and CEO of AI startup R2Decide.

“By Musk putting a price tag on the non-profit part, he makes the split way more expensive for Altman to do,” Mr Finger told the BBC. “It’s very simple.”

Mr Musk justified his actions by saying he wants to return OpenAI – which he co-founded – to its non-profit roots and original mission of developing AI for the benefit of humanity.

Others, though, suggest he has somewhat less noble motives linked to his own AI company xAI and chatbot Grok, which have received a lacklustre response from the public.

“Musk has missed the AI train, somewhat. He’s behind, and he has made several attempts to catch up,” Mr Finger said.

Now, Mr Finger says, Mr Musk is trying to kneecap his most formidable competitor.

An already-tense relationship appeared to worsen further last week with Mr Altman taunting Mr Musk’s offer on X, and Mr Musk retorting by calling his onetime partner a “swindler”.

Mr Altman then hit back in an interview with Bloomberg, opining that Mr Musk is not “a happy person” and saying his decisions are made from a “position of insecurity”.

The tit-for-tat is also playing out in court, where US district judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is considering Mr Musk’s request for an injunction that would block OpenAI from its planned conversion.

He claims that he will be irreparably harmed without her intervention.

“It is plausible that what Mr Musk is saying is true. We’ll find out. He’ll sit on the stand,” Gonzalez Rogers said during a hearing in Musk v Altman earlier this month in Oakland, California.

According to OpenAI’s lawyers, Mr Musk’s recent bid contradicts his earlier claims that OpenAI’s assets cannot be transferred away for “private gain.”

“[O]ut of court, those constraints evidently do not apply, so long as Musk and his allies are the buyers,” their reply brief states.

Some observers say making a deal never appeared to be his goal.

“I think he’s just trying to create noise and news and consternation,” says Karl Freund, founder and principal analyst at Cambrian-AI.

But in addition to causing problems for his old rival, that strategy could inflict lasting damage on Mr Musk’s own reputation.

“He’s brilliant. He creates incredible companies that are doing incredible things. But his personal agenda is causing people to question his motives,” Mr Freund said.