Musk’s attorney, Marc Toberoff, confirmed that the Tesla and SpaceX chief made the offer for all of OpenAI’s assets. The bid is backed by Musk’s AI firm x.AI alongside private equity firms Baron Capital Group and Valor Management.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who co-founded the company with Musk in 2015 as a non-profit, dismissed the bid on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, which Musk acquired for $44bn in 2022. Responding to the offer, Altman wrote, “no thank you but we will buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.” Musk replied with a single word, “swindler.”
Musk departed OpenAI in 2018 and later founded x.AI. He has been vocal in his opposition to OpenAI’s transition to a for-profit model under Altman’s leadership. In 2023, Musk filed two lawsuits against the company, arguing that it had strayed from its original mission of developing AI for public benefit.
At x.AI, we live by the values I was promised OpenAI would follow, Musk stated. We’ve made Grok open source, and we respect the rights of content creators. It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was. We will make sure that happens.
Toberoff emphasized that the consortium is willing to match or exceed any rival offers. If Sam Altman and the current OpenAI board are intent on becoming a fully for-profit corporation, it is vital that the charity be fairly compensated for what its leadership is taking away: control over the most transformative technology of our time, he said. As the co-founder of OpenAI and one of the most innovative and successful tech leaders in history, Musk is best positioned to protect and grow OpenAI’s technology.
The bid comes as OpenAI continues to attract significant investment. The company was valued at $157bn in its latest funding round in October 2024.
Musk’s move follows political shifts in AI policy. While he is an advisor to former President Donald Trump, OpenAI was included in a recent $500bn government-backed initiative, dubbed Stargate, aimed at building AI infrastructure in the US. Notably, x.AI was excluded from the initiative, and Altman attended Trump’s inauguration.
Source: Business Cloud
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