Musk’s Bid to Control OpenAI Complicates For-Profit Transition
OpenAI's Altman has rebuffed the offer, but Musk's price tag for the nonprofit division creates a potential floor before restructuring discussions are completed.
Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI Inc.
Photographer: Nathan Laine/BloombergA decade ago, Sam Altman, Elon Musk and a group of other founders launched OpenAI as a nonprofit with a mission to build artificial intelligence that benefits humanity. Now, Altman and OpenAI are pushing to restructure as a more conventional for-profit business — and Musk is using every tool at his disposal to stop it.
Musk, who has since launched a rival AI firm, has fired off angry posts about Altman on his social media platform, filed two lawsuits against the company for allegedly straying from its founding principles and asked a court to block the ChatGPT maker’s restructuring efforts. Last week, a judge said she was reluctant to immediately issue such an order in a case pitting “billionaires versus billionaires.”
Following that setback, Musk is shifting his battle with OpenAI from the courtroom to the boardroom. Musk has enlisted a group of wealthy allies for an unsolicited $97.4 billion bid to buy the assets of the nonprofit that controls OpenAI. In a statement, Musk said he hopes to return OpenAI to being “the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was.”
Musk’s proposal was quickly rebuffed by Altman, who called it a tactic by a competitor to “slow us down” and stressed that the company is “not for sale.” Meanwhile, OpenAI board director Larry Summers told Bloomberg News he has not received any formal outreach from Musk’s side, raising questions about the seriousness of the offer.