Open AI CEO Sam Altman and billionaire Elon Musk are at loggerheads again after reports that Musk and other investors have made a $97.4 billion offer to acquire ChatGPT developer.
Open AI CEO Sam Altman and billionaire Elon Musk are at loggerheads again after reports that Musk and other investors have made a $97.4 billion offer to acquire ChatGPT developer.
In response, Altman laconically rejected the offer on Elon Musk’s social network X (Twitter), Variety reports. «No thanks, but we’ll buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want,» the OpenAI chief wrote.
Musk responded to his post with the word «swindler,» which can be translated as «swindler» or «swindler.» This once again demonstrated the animosity between Altman and Musk, who were part of the team of Silicon Valley investors and entrepreneurs who founded OpenAI as a nonprofit in 2015.
Open AI and Musk’s various ventures are now working on competing AI services and products. In December, Musk filed a federal lawsuit to block Altman’s plan to transform OpenAI from a research nonprofit into a more traditional for-profit venture.
The list of investors who worked with Musk on the OpenAI acquisition proposal also included Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel, in a private capacity. Attorney Mark Toberoff, a veteran of the entertainment and intellectual property industries, confirmed that such an offer had indeed been made. Last month, Toberoff, of Toberoff & Associates, sent a legal letter to officials in California and Delaware who regulate nonprofits, urging them to force Open AI to open up the conversion process to outside bidders.
«If Sam Altman and the current board of directors of OpenAI, Inc. intend to become a fully commercial corporation, it is vital that the charity receives fair compensation for its
for what its leadership is taking away from it: control over the most transformative technology of our time,» he noted.
Musk is said to have proposed merging Open AI with his AI company x.AI and preserving the open source ethos that Open AI was supposedly built on from the start. The $97.4 billion purchase price is said to go toward funding Open AI’s charitable and philanthropic efforts. According to Toberoff, «Musk is the person best suited to champion and advance OpenAI’s technology.»
«It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open source, security-focused code it once was. We will make sure that happens,» Elon Musk said.
Altman and Musk previously clashed after Trump announced the creation of a new $500 billion Stargate investment project involving OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank. In comments on social media, Musk suggested that the partners did not have enough money to finance the project at the promised level.
