Sam Altman rejects Elon Musk’s $97.4 billion bid for OpenAI, offers to buy X
By Aidin Vaziri,Staff WriterFeb 10, 2025
Open AI CEO Sam Altman, center, publicly rejected a $97.4 billion unsolicited bid from Elon Musk and a group of investors to take control of the nonprofit organization that oversees OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, publicly rejected a $97.4 billion unsolicited bid from Elon Musk and a group of investors to take control of the nonprofit overseeing the company behind ChatGPT.
“No thank you,” Altman quickly responded on X, offering to buy Musk’s social media platform for “$9.74 billion” instead.
Musk acquired X, previously known as Twitter, for $44 billion in 2022.
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Monday’s offer from Musk escalated the ongoing feud between him and Altman over OpenAI, which the Bay Area tech leaders co-founded in 2015.
After Musk left the board in 2018 and Altman became CEO, OpenAI created a for-profit subsidiary to attract funding from Microsoft and other investors. Altman is now working to transition the subsidiary into a traditional for-profit company while spinning off the nonprofit.
Musk, through his attorney Marc Toberoff, told the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the story, that the bid was meant to restore OpenAI to its original “open-source, safety-focused force for good.” He added, “We will make sure that happens.”
Tesla Motors CEO and product architect Elon Musk, Y Combinator President Sam Altman and New York Times Financial Columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin speak onstage during “What Will They Think of Next? Talking About Innovation” at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in 2015 in San Francisco.
Mike Windle/Getty Images for Vanity Fair
Musk’s group, which includes investors like Valor Equity Partners and Hollywood executive Ari Emanuel, argued that if OpenAI fully transitions into a for-profit company, the nonprofit should be fairly compensated for its control over “the most transformative technology of our time.”
Musk filed a lawsuit against the company last year, first in California state court and later in federal court. He accused OpenAI of betraying its original mission as a nonprofit research lab serving the public good. Musk had invested approximately $45 million in the startup from its founding until 2018, according to Toberoff.
OpenAI has rejected Musk’s claims, calling them baseless.
Last week, Musk and OpenAI’s lawyers appeared in a California federal court, where a judge considered Musk’s request for an order to block the company from converting into a for-profit entity.
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said it was a “stretch” for Musk to claim he will be irreparably harmed if she does not intervene to stop OpenAI from its planned transition but did not issue a ruling.
“It is plausible that what Mr. Musk is saying is true. We’ll find out. He’ll sit on the stand,” she said.
Altman’s plan to spin off the nonprofit by 2026 has already encountered setbacks, including legal disputes with Microsoft and ongoing disagreements about how OpenAI’s nonprofit arm should be valued.
This latest chapter comes after Altman and other business leaders joined President Trump the day after his inauguration last month to announce a plan called Stargate, which aimed to invest up to $500 billion in U.S. data centers over the next four years.
Despite his close ties to Trump, Musk was not part of the announcement. Later that day, Musk took to X to accuse Stargate’s backers of lacking the promised funds and once again called Altman a “swindler.” |
