Elon Musk-led group makes surprise bid of nearly $100B for OpenAI

Elon Musk escalated his feud with OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman on Monday, Report informs via The Guardian.

The billionaire is leading a consortium of investors that announced it had submitted a bid of $97.4 billion for “all assets” of the artificial intelligence company to OpenAI’s board of directors.

The startup, which operates ChatGPT, has been working to restructure itself away from its original non-profit status. OpenAI also operates a for-profit subsidiary, and Musk’s unsolicited offer could complicate the company’s plans.

“If Sam Altman and the present OpenAI, Inc. Board of Directors 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 from it: control over the most transformative technology of our time,” said Marc Toberoff, the attorney representing the investors.

Altman posted his reaction on X shortly after the news broke, saying, “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.” Musk famously bought Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion and renamed it X. Musk responded to that post, saying, “Swindler.”

Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI but left the company in 2019 and started his own AI company called xAI.