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Elon Musk and a consortium of investors have launched a $94.7 billion bid to buy artificial intelligence leader OpenAI.
A lawyer for the Tesla and SpaceX boss submitted the bid to OpenAI’s board on Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported.
“It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was,” Musk said in a statement to The Journal. “We will make sure that happens.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quickly shot down the deal.
“No thank you, but we will buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want,” he wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter).
If completed, the deal would give Musk, who helped found (and fund) OpenAI in 2015, unprecedented influence over the direction of the rapidly advancing A.I. field even as he is deeply embedded in the Trump administration.
It is the latest salvo in a long-running feud between Musk and Altman over the direction and control of A.I. technology, which both men believe could either transform human civilization or utterly destroy it.
Both men were among the 11 original co-founders of OpenAI, which was created as a non-profit with a mission to ensure that any future powerful A.I. would benefit all of humanity.
Originally founded as a non-profit, Altman has made the organization steadily more commercial, creating a for-profit subsidiary in 2019 meant to incentivize outside investment while still remaining under the control of the non-profit board.
Musk left the board in 2018 after a reported power struggle over who would be CEO amid complaints by some of OpenAI’s co-founders that Musk aimed to acquire “absolute control” over any future superhuman A.I.
The rivalry came to a head in September 2024, when it was reported that Altman was planning to completely convert OpenAI into a public benefit corporation.
Musk, who had by then created his own rival for-profit A.I. firm called xAI, swiftly took legal action against OpenAI, alleging that it had betrayed its principles in order to “cash in” and was violating the terms of Musk’s original donations to the non-profit.
The lawsuit forced Altman to pause his plan to further reform OpenAI’s complicated hybrid ownership structure by turning it into a public benefit corporation.
Since then, the two have been openly warring on Twitter, with Musk calling Altman a “swinder” while Altman branded his rival “not a nice person.”
Musk’s buyout offer could complicate OpenAI’s role in Project Stargate, a recently announced joint partnership of OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank with promises to invest up to $500 billion dollars to grow A.I in America.
