A group of investors led by Elon Musk made a bid to buy out the leading artificial intelligence company, OpenAI. However, it appears that the offer has already been rejected.
According to a new report from the Wall Street Journal, Musk and his investor group submitted an unsolicited offer of $97.4 billion to acquire the nonprofit group that controls OpenAI.
Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman both originally co-founded OpenAI. However, Musk later cut ties with the organization. Since then, the two have butted heads over the direction OpenAI has gone in. At its founding, OpenAI was initially meant to operate as a not-for-profit group with an open-source ethos. However, since ChatGPT exploded on the tech scene, Altman has sought to turn OpenAI into a for-profit company.
Musk, who has since started his own AI company, xAI, has often publicly criticized OpenAI and Altman for its direction.
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“It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was,” Musk’s lawyer said to WSJ in a statement. “We will make sure that happens.”
In a contextless post on Musk’s X, Altman seems to have rejected Musk’s bid. OpenAI has already raised billions of dollars from companies like Microsoft and was last valued at $157 billion.
On X, Altman posted, “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.” Altman’s quip about buying Twitter was a not-so-subtle jab at Musk.
Musk acquired X, formerly known as Twitter, for $44 billion in 2022. Musk’s purchase price for the company was well beyond what the social media platform was worth. Since Musk’s takeover, X has only dropped further in value.
Musk replied to Altman’s rejection with a single word: “Swindler.”
