The latest salvo in the ongoing legal feud over OpenAI between Elon Musk and CEO Sam Altman has seen the former lead an audacious bid to buy the artificial intelligence powerhouse that owns ChatGPT.
The world’s richest man is fronting a consortium that says it has offered $97.4 billion to buy the nonprofit OpenAI, Inc in order to make it the “force for good it once was” and prevent Altman from transitioning it to a traditional for-profit entity.
Although OpenAI hasn’t formally responded publicly to the news of the bid, Sam Altman has been quick to shoot it down on X, formerly Twitter, with a presumably tongue-in-cheek counteroffer to buy Musk’s social media platform.
Musk’s Irresistible Force
The offer was first reported by the Wall Street Journal (paywalled), which had been informed by Musk’s attorney, Marc Toberoff.
Toberoff told the WSJ that Musk was leading a consortium of investors that has made an unsolicited bid of $97.4 billion to purchase OpenAI’s nonprofit controlling company – an entity that was co-founded by Musk in 2015.
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The move is ostensibly fueled by Musk’s concern that the ChatGPT owner has been acting in breach of competition laws, which will only be exacerbated by the company’s pivot towards a for-profit model.
“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.” – Elon Musk
But it’s not much of a stretch to interpret the move as either the continuation of a personal grudge against Altman, or purely commercial – Musk will inevitably have the fortunes of his own AI company, xAI, in mind, too.
“The Most Transformative Technology of Our Time”
The WSJ’s report says that Musk’s group includes investors such as Valor Equity Partners, Baron Capital, Atreides Management and Vy Capital.
They are prepared to go all in on OpenAI, Toberoff told the WSJ, and will stump up the cash to outbid any other interested parties.
“If Sam Altman and the present OpenAI Inc. Board of Directors are intent on becoming a fully for-profit corporation,” Toberoff said, “it is vital that the charity be fairly compensated for what its leadership is taking away from it: control over the most transformative technology of our time.”
Altman’s Unmovable Object
The seemingly inexhaustible Musk is juggling his role in Donald Trump’s administration as head of the Department of Government Efficiency to escalate his ongoing battle with Altman over the future of OpenAI.
While his lawsuit against Altman and OpenAI is seeking to prevent it from converting to a for-profit corporation, it also threatens to throw a spanner in the works of the Stargate project – the $500 billion AI infrastructure gambit being spearheaded by OpenAI and other AI leaders at the behest of president Trump.
But Altman offered a pithy corrective to anybody thinking that he may be steamrollered by Musk’s strong-arm tactics, while also exacerbating the tit-for-tat beef between the two tech entrepreneurs:
no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want
— Sam Altman (@sama) February 10, 2025
Musk’s own reply was even shorter, with a post simply calling Altman a “Swindler”.
