A group of investors led by Elon Musk has offered to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI for US$97.4 billion, escalating a clash between the Tesla Inc chief executive and the artificial intelligence (AI) company he cofounded.
With the unsolicited bid, Musk said in a statement that he hoped to return OpenAI to being “the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was.”
In response, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted on Musk’s X social-media platform: “No thank you but we will buy twitter for US$9.74 billion if you want.”
Photo: AFP
Musk acquired Twitter for US$44 billion, but its value later diminished, according to outside estimates.
The bid is being backed by Musk’s own AI start-up xAI, which could merge with OpenAI following a deal, the Wall Street Journal reported.
According to a statement from Marc Toberoff, a lawyer representing the investors, other backers of the proposal include Valor Equity Partners, Baron Capital, Atreides Management, Vy Capital, Joe Lonsdale’s 8VC and Ari Emanuel, through his investment fund.
It is difficult to determine how serious Musk’s bid is and what his motivation was for making it, Telluride Legal Strategies LLC founder Rob Rosenberg said.
Even if it is not successful, Musk’s move could potentially complicate OpenAI’s effort to transition from being a nonprofit entity into a multibillion-dollar for-profit AI giant — a transformation Musk has opposed.
“I think he’s trying to make a statement and bring more attention to the fact that OpenAI is still on this course to switch from being a nonprofit to a for-profit company,” Rosenberg said.
In the statement, Toberoff indicated one motivation for the bid: to place outside pressure on OpenAI while it determines a value for parts of its business while transitioning to a for-profit entity.
“That value cannot be determined by insiders negotiating on both sides of the same table,” he wrote. “After all, the public is OpenAI Inc’s beneficiary, and a sweetheart deal between insiders does not serve the public interest.”
Musk and Altman have been locked in a long-standing feud over the direction that OpenAI has taken since its founding. Musk has alleged that the start-up has abandoned all pretense of proceeding as a charity to benefit humanity with a focus on openness and safety.
OpenAI has rejected that characterization, and last year said that Musk was lashing out after an earlier failed attempt to make the company part of his automaker Tesla.
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