Elon Musk, main a consortium of buyers, has made an unsolicited $97.4 billion bid to amass OpenAI, aiming to revive the synthetic intelligence firm he co-founded to its authentic mission of creating know-how for the advantage of humanity.
The supply was offered to OpenAI’s board of administrators on Monday, as first reported by The Wall Avenue Journal. Musk’s proposal seeks to counter OpenAI’s transition towards a for-profit mannequin.
“It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused pressure for good it as soon as was,” Musk mentioned, in accordance with a press release from his lawyer, Marc Toberoff.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman dismissed the supply and mockingly prompt buying Musk’s social media platform, X, for $9.74 billion as an alternative. In response, Musk known as Altman a “swindler” and referred to him as “Rip-off Altman.”
Musk helped co-found OpenAI in 2015, investing roughly $45 million, however left the board in 2018 as a result of strategic disagreements with Altman. Since then, he has been a vocal critic of OpenAI’s course, significantly its commercialization efforts and shut partnership with Microsoft.
In March 2024, Musk sued OpenAI, alleging it had strayed from its founding ideas by prioritizing revenue over its mission to serve humanity.
Musk’s lawyer mentioned on Monday that if Altman and OpenAI’s board “are intent on changing into a completely for-profit company, it is important that the charity be pretty compensated for what its management is taking away from it: management over probably the most transformative know-how of our time,” in accordance with a press release cited by AP.
The main U.S. synthetic intelligence analysis group, OpenAI, faces rising competitors from Chinese language AI corporations, notably DeepSeek. In January 2025, the Hangzhou-based startup unveiled its open-source AI mannequin, DeepSeek-R1, which reportedly matches or surpasses OpenAI’s fashions in areas equivalent to mathematical reasoning and code technology.
Musk, in the meantime, has been creating his personal AI firm, xAI, which launched in 2023. The corporate launched Grok, a chatbot built-in into X (previously Twitter), designed to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Musk has positioned xAI as a challenger to OpenAI and Google’s DeepMind, specializing in constructing AI programs that prioritize truthfulness and transparency.
To strengthen the USA’ place within the international AI race, President Donald Trump introduced the Stargate mission in January 2025. The initiative, a collaboration between OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank, goals to speculate as much as $500 billion in AI infrastructure over 4 years. In accordance with current studies, SoftBank is near finalizing a $40 billion funding deal, which might worth OpenAI at $260 billion.
Supply hyperlink
