Gus Carlson is a U.S.-based columnist for The Globe and Mail.

When it comes to making strange bedfellows, Big Tech is giving politics a run for its money.

Consider the peculiar alignment of archrivals Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, whose mutual animosity has been boiling for a decade. Suddenly, they find themselves allied – at least intellectually and legally – in a fight to stop OpenAI’s attempt to change from a charity to for-profit status.

Both billionaires have filed legal complaints in the past two months suggesting the billions of dollars OpenAI has raised as a charity would give it an unfair competitive advantage if it were allowed to change its spots. Further, Mr. Zuckerberg said in a letter to California’s attorney-general, blessing such a structural shift would set a dangerous precedent for other startups to do the same.

To be sure, there is lots of competitive posturing going on here. After all, OpenAI is the main rival of Mr. Zuckerberg’s Meta and Mr. Musk’s xAI in the AI space. And there is no love lost between the Meta/xAI alignment and Microsoft,........

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