Musk's ambitious bid for OpenAI rebuffed by Altman
Elon Musk, along with a group of investors, has made an offer to buy OpenAI for $97.4 billion. Sam Altman, the company's co-founder, who is in conflict with Musk, rejected the proposal. However, he made Musk a surprising counter-offer.
The proposal was reported by "The Wall Street Journal" via lawyer Marc Toberoff, who represents Musk and associated investors from Silicon Valley.
"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," Musk said in a published statement.
The offer amounts to $97.4 billion and is aimed at taking over the non-profit foundation OpenAI, which formally controls the company behind ChatGPT.
The head of OpenAI, Sam Altman, rejected the offer in a post on platform X.
"No thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want," he wrote.
Altman and Musk: once partners, now adversaries
Altman and Musk were among the co-founders of OpenAI in 2015, but have been in conflict for many years. Last year, Musk sued his former partner, accusing him of betraying the organisation's statutory mission based on non-profit principles, open source, and the safe development of AI. The billionaire, originally from South Africa, also founded his own AI development company, xAI, which is part of the consortium attempting to take over OpenAI.
Currently, the largest investor in OpenAI is Microsoft. As noted by "WSJ", the offer made by Musk complicates Altman's plans regarding the future of his organisation, including its transformation into a fully regular enterprise and plans to invest up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure as part of the "Stargate" project.
Immediately after Altman announced the initiative at the White House, Musk stated that Altman does not have the promised funds.
