Days after offering $97.4 billion for OpenAI’s nonprofit, Elon Musk is proposing a new deal.
“If [the] OpenAI board is prepared to preserve the charity’s mission and stipulate to take the ‘for sale’ sign off its assets by halting its conversion, Musk will withdraw the bid,” lawyers for the world’s richest man said in a court filing, per a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report.
Musk and a group of investors first floated the offer for the nonprofit that controls the artificial intelligence (AI) startup on Monday (Feb. 10), the latest in a series of moves to prevent the company from giving up its nonprofit status.
“It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was,” Musk said in a statement provided by his attorney. “We will make sure that happens.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quickly pushed back. “No thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want,” Altman said in a post on X, referring to the Musk-owned social media platform by its former name.
The following day, Altman once again rejected the offer in an interview with Bloomberg Television, suggesting that Musk’s bid was born out of frustration related to xAI, his own artificial intelligence company.
“I think he is probably just trying to slow us down. He obviously is a competitor,” said Altman. “I wish he would just compete by building a better product, but I think there’s been a lot of tactics, many, many lawsuits, all sorts of other crazy stuff, now this.”
As the WSJ notes, Musk’s bid has complicated Altman’s plans for the future of OpenAI, not just its switch to a for-profit operation, but also the $500 billion AI infrastructure project known as “Stargate,” a joint venture with Oracle and SoftBank.
Altman and Musk are engaged in a legal battle over the direction of OpenAI, which they helped found 10 years ago.
Last week, a judge ruled that the suit — initiated by Musk — would move to trial, with the possibility of Musk taking the stand.
“Something is going to trial in this case,” said U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, adding that Musk would “sit on the stand, present it to a jury, and a jury will decide who is right.”
OpenAI has argued that becoming a for-profit company will let it garner the types of investments it needs to develop the best AI models. The company has also said it would try to dismiss Musk’s claims, saying he “should be competing in the marketplace rather than the courtroom.”
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