Elon Musk makes bid to buy OpenAI, Altman says he’ll buy Twitter instead
No thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want, wrote Altman on X mocking Tesla CEO’s proposed bid
Hyderabad: A group of investors led by Elon Musk has offered to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI for $97.4 billion.
This adds to the ongoing rivalry between the Tesla CEO and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
The offer was submitted to OpenAI’s board on Feb 11, according to Musk’s lawyer, Marc Toberoff.
OpenAI is operated by a nonprofit that controls OpenAI LP, a for-profit company.
However, Altman has rejected Musk’s offer and jokingly made a counter-bid on X. “No thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want,” he wrote on X. He also mocked Musk by pointing to X’s old name ‘Twitter.’
Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and has accused Altman for abandoning its open-source and non-profit mission. “It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was. We will make sure that happens,” Musk had said.
Earlier too the xAI owner and OpenAI CEO had locked horns on X about Stargate, the $500 billion AI infrastructure project announced by US President Donald Trump to build data centres for OpenAI across the US.
OpenAI would team up with SoftBank and Oracle to build multiple data centres for AI in the United States. “They don’t actually have the money,” Musk, Trump’s close aide, retorted in a series of posts on X after the deal was announced.
“SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority,” he wrote.
Altman fired back. “Wrong, as you surely know,” Altman said, responding to Musk’s allegation that SoftBank was short of capital.
The investors who are part of Musk’s deal include his ompany, xAI, and asset management funds run by Tesla investors and supporters Ron Baron and Gavin Baker, according to Musk’s lawyar Toberoff said.
