A consortium led by Elon Musk said it has offered $97.4bn to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI, months after the billionaire sued the artificial intelligence startup to block it from transitioning to a for-profit firm.
Musk’s bid, revealed on Monday, could ratchet up longstanding tensions with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman over the future of the startup at the heart of a boom in generative AI technology.
Altman promptly posted on X: “No thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.”
The two are already embroiled in an ongoing lawsuit. Musk criticised a $500bn OpenAI-led project called Stargate announced with great fanfare at the White House just after United States President Donald Trump returned to office, suggesting the investors involved lacked the funding for the project.
“It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was,” Musk said in the press release. “We will make sure that happens.”
OpenAI, Musk, Musk’s lawyer Marc Toberoff and OpenAI backer Microsoft did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the Reuters news agency.
The bid is being backed by Musk’s AI company xAI, which could merge with OpenAI following a deal, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported Musk’s offer earlier on Monday.
Even without any antitrust implications, a deal this size would need Musk and his consortium to raise enormous funds.
OpenAI was valued at $157bn in its latest funding round in October, cementing its status as one of the most valuable private companies in the world. SoftBank Group is in talks to lead a funding round of up to $40bn in OpenAI at a valuation of $300bn, including the new funds, the Reuters news agency reported in January.
Musk co-founded OpenAI with Altman in 2015, but left before the company took off. He founded the competing AI startup xAI in 2023.
OpenAI is now trying to transition into a for-profit from a nonprofit entity, which it says is required to secure the capital needed for developing the best artificial intelligence models.
Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman says the founders originally approached him to fund a nonprofit focused on developing AI to benefit humanity, but that it was now focused on making money.
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