A staff of traders led by Elon Musk submitted a $97.6 billion bid to buy OpenAI on Monday. The information comes by the use of Musk’s lawyer, Marc Toberoff, who confirmed the reporting with The Wall Avenue Journal.
The unsolicited bid is the most recent escalation by Musk in his warfare with co-founder Sam Altman, with whom he co-founded OpenAI with quite a few different people again in 2015. Musk is already embroiled in a authorized dispute with OpenAI, submitting a 2024 injunction in opposition to its effort to transition away from its nonprofit standing. The Musk-led staff is positioning the transfer as a bid to refocus OpenAI on open sourced AI, as was its preliminary purpose.
“It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open supply, safety-focused drive for good it as soon as was,” Musk informed The Journal, by the use of Toberoff. “We’ll guarantee that occurs.” Musk’s personal AI agency, xAI, is concerned with the bid, resulting in hypothesis {that a} profitable acquisition might discover the 2 firms merging.
Musk particularly calls out X’s Grok mannequin in a associated assertion supplied to TechCrunch. “At x.AI, we stay by the values I used to be promised OpenAI would observe,” the billionaire says. “We’ve made Grok open supply, and we respect the rights of content material creators,” mentioned Musk. “It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused drive for good it as soon as was. We’ll guarantee that occurs.”
In response to Musk’s supply, Altman earlier Monday authored a cheeky X post, writing, “no thanks however we are going to purchase Twitter for $9.74 billion if you’d like.” Musk and traders famously bought Twitter for $44 billion in 2022. TechCrunch has reached out to OpenAI for additional remark.