Word’s richest man Elon Musk has stepped up his trolling game by making an offer to buy ChatGPT maker OpenAI for $97.4 billion. The bid was first reported by the Wall Street Journal and later confirmed by Musk.
Musk co-founded OpenAI along with Sam Altman, but they are waging a bitter battle over the future of OpenAI, which was founded in 2015 as a charitable foundation.
Musk left the company in 2019, after which Altman became CEO and started a for-profit subsidiary to raise money from Microsoft and other investors. Musk wants the bid to prevent OpenAI from turning from a foundation into a for-profit company.
“It is time for OpenAI to return to open source,” Musk said in a statement.
For the bid, Musk is working with his own AI company xAI, Valor Equity Partners, Baron Capital, Atreides Management, Vy Capital and 8VC.
In response Altman took to X to reject the offer but added that he might buy X for just under $9.74 billion.
OpenAI is part of Stargate, a collaboration including Softbank and Oracle, to invest $500 billion in artificial intelligence infrastructure such as data centres and power stations. Musk slammed the initiative on X, saying: “SoftBank has well under $10 billion [€9.5 billion] secured. I have that on good authority”.
Musk has a complicated relationship with AI. In 2023 he was one of 1,800 signatories to a letter calling for a pause to AI research. The letter was later criticised when some signatories protested that they had not actually signed it.
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