A team of investors led by Elon Musk submitted a $97.6 billion bid to purchase OpenAI on Monday. The news comes by way of Musk’s lawyer, Marc Toberoff, who confirmed the reporting with The Wall Street Journal.
The unsolicited bid is the latest escalation by Musk in his war with co-founder Sam Altman, with whom he co-founded OpenAI with numerous other individuals back in 2015. Musk is already embroiled in a legal dispute with OpenAI, filing a 2024 injunction against its effort to transition away from its nonprofit status. The Musk-led team is positioning the move as a bid to refocus OpenAI on open sourced AI, as was its initial aim.
“It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open source, safety-focused force for good it once was,” Musk told The Journal, by way of Toberoff. “We will make sure that happens.” Musk’s own AI firm, xAI, is involved with the bid, leading to speculation that a successful acquisition could find the two companies merging.
Musk specifically calls out X’s Grok model in a related statement provided to TechCrunch. “At x.AI, we live by the values I was promised OpenAI would follow,” the billionaire says. “We’ve made Grok open source, and we respect the rights of content creators,” said Musk. “It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was. We will make sure that happens.”
In response to Musk’s offer, Altman earlier Monday authored a cheeky X post, writing, “[N]o thank you but we will buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.” Musk and investors famously purchased Twitter for $44 billion in 2022. TechCrunch has reached out to OpenAI for further comment.
