Elon Musk has offered $97.4 billion for control of OpenAI. According to The Wall Street Journal, a group of investors led by his company xAI submitted this offer to the OpenAI board of directors. The investors are seeking to buy out the nonprofit organization that runs the commercial division of OpenAI.
OpenAI CEO has already responded to this news in X: “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want,” Sam Altman wrote on the social network owned by Musk.
“It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open source, security-focused code it once was,” Musk said in a commentary that his lawyer passed on to the WSJ. “We will make sure that happens.”
It's hard to say how serious Musk's proposal is and what, if any, chances it has of succeeding.
OpenAI is not a traditional company, and the nonprofit structure that Altman and other executives are seeking to move away from may, on the contrary, protect the company from takeover.
If OpenAI were an ordinary commercial company with traditional shares, Musk's offer would likely have triggered the so-called "Revlon moment" in corporate law, when under certain circumstances the board of directors is forced to sell the company to the highest bidder to maximize shareholder returns.
Swindler
Swindler
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 10, 2025Expectedly, Musk did not appreciate Altman's joke, responding to him with the word "Swindler" and later calling him "Scam Altman."
Scam Altman
Scam Altman
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 10, 2025
pic.twitter.com/j9EXIqBZ8u