The board of OpenAI unanimously rejected Elon Musk’s $97.4 billion takeover bid, declaring on Friday that the tech firm is “not for sale.”
Donald Trump’s “First Buddy” and a group of investment firms offered to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, on Monday.
“OpenAI is not for sale, and the board has unanimously rejected Mr. Musk’s latest attempt to disrupt his competition,” Bret Taylor, chair of OpenAI’s board said in a statement.
“Any potential reorganization of OpenAI will strengthen our nonprofit and its mission to ensure artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity,” the statement concluded.
OpenAI attorney William Savitt wrote to Musk’s lawyer stating that the offer was “not in the best interests of OAI’s mission and is rejected.”
Earlier in the week an attorney for Musk said his client would drop the bid if the company agreed to stop a transition from going from a nonprofit to a for-profit company. The Tesla CEO sued OpenAI last year over the matter.
The battle over the company got personal when OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Musk’s proposal was coming from a place of insecurity over xAI, an artificial intelligence company he owns.
“I don’t think he’s like a happy person. I do feel for him,” Altman said in a Bloomberg interview. “I wish he would just compete by building a better product, but I think there’s been a lot of tactics.”
A decade ago, Musk worked at OpenAI as an early investor but in 2018, he left the company over disagreements with other leadership members, particularly Altman.
Altman has said the company needs to pivot to a for-profit business model to build capital for its large expansions.
In January, President Donald Trump announced a $500 billion Stargate Project in collaboration between OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank, and others to build AI infrastructure in the United States.
Musk trolled the companies on X following the announcement.
“They don’t actually have the money,” he wrote. “SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority.”
