A consortium of investors led by Elon Musk has made a $97.4 billion bid for ChatGPT maker OpenAI.
The billionaire’s lawyer, Mark Toberoff, confirmed that the bid for “all assets” of the tech company was presented to its board on Monday.
The offer is the latest twist in a long-running battle between Musk, the world’s richest man and US President Donald Trump’s right-hand man, and Open AI CEO Sam Altman over the future of the startup at the heart of the AI boom.
In response to the bid, Altman posted on Musk’s social media platform X: “No thanks, but we’ll buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.”
OpenAI is widely credited with bringing artificial intelligence tools to the mainstream and attracting major investment in the field.
Musk and Altman co-founded the startup as a non-profit in 2015, but the relationship has been strained since Tesla and X bosses left the company in 2018.
Altman is reportedly restructuring the company to become a non-profit and removing it from its nonprofit board — a move Musk argues means the company has abandoned its original mission of developing AI for the benefit of humanity.
But OpenAI argues that the transformation into a non-profit is necessary to secure the funding needed to develop the best artificial intelligence models.
The bid to acquire OpenAI is backed by Musk’s AI company xAI, as well as several private equity firms, including Barron Capital Group and Valor Management.
“The time has come for OpenAI to return to its open-source, security-focused powerhouse. We will make sure that happens for good,” Musk said in a statement.
The $97.4 billion offer is well below the $157 billion the company was valued at in its most recent funding round in October of last year. Negotiations for another round of funding are now reportedly valuing it at $300 billion.
In a statement, Mr. Toberoff said the group was prepared to consider matching or exceeding any potential high bid.
“As the co-founder of OpenAI and one of the most innovative and successful technology industry leaders in history, Musk is in the best position to protect and grow OpenAI’s technology,” Musk’s lawyer said on behalf of him and other investors.
The ChatGPT founder is working with another US tech giant, Oracle, to build a $500 billion artificial intelligence infrastructure in the US.
The new company, dubbed “The Stargate Project,” was announced at the White House by President Donald Trump, who called it “the largest AI infrastructure project ever in history” and said it would help sustain the “future of technology” in the US.
Musk, a top Trump adviser, said the campaign “doesn’t actually have the money” it promised to invest, but he did not provide any details or confirmation of the ideas.
