After purchasing Twitter and taking a chief role in the
Trump administration, the
world’s richest man
now has his highlights set on a new target: tech business darling
Open AI. In a move
first reported on by The Wall Street Journal, Elon Musk apparently
carried a $97.4
billion bid to buy the not-for-profit that controls Open AI to the
business's board on
Monday morning
In addition to Musk, the offer has support from venture
capitalists, including Hollywood television
mogul Ari Emanuel and
Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, so he isn’t going it alone. Still, it would
be a major move for
Musk, who has publicly beefed with Open AI and worked to develop his
own other in X’s
Grok.
The offer also follows Open AI’s announcement, together with
President Trump, of Project
Stargate, a plan to
invest $500 billion in house out the U.S.'s domestic AI set-up. Again, Open AI
is
not alone in this
initiative, having stored financial support from SoftBank, Oracle, and MGX, as
well as skill support
from Nvidia, Arm, and Microsoft.
In other words, if the buying were to go through, Open AI’s
partners would now suddenly have
some quite
unanticipated new faces to contend with.
The offer comes amidst Open AI CEO Sam Altman’s shot to
restructure the nonprofit into a
for-profit company as
well as an effort to raise $40 billion in funding, which would place the
value of the set-up
at over $340 billion. Altman has now posted a curt message on X declining
Musk’s offer, and
joking back that Open AI would be willing to buy the former Twitter for $9.74
billion. While, OK,
brutal, Altman’s reply might not be the end of the offer, as the CEO still has
to contend with
associated board members: Open AI’s structure means no panel members hold
direct equity in the
business, which makes voting on such choices a team effort. Moreover,
Microsoft already
owns a marginal economic interest in the company, and it’s possible the
business would no
longer wish to pursue this bond under new direction.
For what it’s cost, this isn’t Musk’s first time bickering
with Open AI. The millionaire actually co-founded
the nonprofit arm of Open AI along with Altman in 2015
before leave-taking in 2019. Open AI later wrote
that Musk said the group’s “possibility of success was 0.”
Now, it appears his defiance has transformed. In a statement
his lawyer providing to The Wall Street
Journal, Musk said “It’s time for Open AI to arrival to the
open-source, safety-intensive force for good it\ once was
