OpenAI founder Sam Altman rejected a reported $100 billion bid by Elon Musk and a group of investors to buy the artificial intelligence giant, ratcheting up the stakes in the war for the future of the technology.
Musk and a consortium of investors offered $97.4 billion to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI, their lawyer Marc Toberoff said Monday. The unsolicited bid was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
“It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was,” Musk said in a statement through Toberoff, according to The Wall Street Journal. “We will make sure that happens.”
Altman quickly slapped down the reported offer in a post on X, writing, “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.”
“Swindler,” Musk replied.
Musk has long feuded with Altman, with whom he co-founded OpenAI, the company that created AI chatbot ChatGPT. The tech billionaire, who resigned from OpenAI in 2018, has derided Altman as “Swindly Sam,” while Altman has called Musk a “bully.”
Last month, Musk swiped at a landmark half-a-trillion-dollar AI initiative partly funded by OpenAI to build data centers in the United States that was trumpeted by President Donald Trump as historic. Musk claimed the plan’s backers “don’t actually have the money.”
Musk’s reported offer to purchase OpenAI — backed by firms Valor Equity Partners, Baron Capital, Atreides Management, Vy Capital and 8VC, according to The Wall Street Journal — could complicate Altman’s efforts to take the company private.
That’s because to become a commercial venture, the for-profit arm of OpenAI must purchase its controlling nonprofit’s assets at a fair price. But Musk’s audacious bid could raise the value of those assets, meaning the for-profit arm would potentially have to spend more, or else leave the nonprofit explaining to regulators why it accepted a lower bid.
Photo: OpenAI founder Sam Altman
Source: Politico