Elon Musk-led group makes US$97.4 billion bid for control of OpenAI.
A consortium led by Elon Musk said on Monday it has offered US$97.4 billion to buy the non-profit that controls OpenAI, another salvo in the billionaire’s fight to block the artificial intelligence start-up from transitioning to a for-profit firm.
Musk’s bid is likely to ratchet up long-standing tensions with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman over the future of the ChatGPT maker at the heart of a boom in generative AI technology.
Altman on Monday promptly posted on X: “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want”. Musk co-founded OpenAI with Altman in 2015 as a non-profit, but left before the company took off. He founded the competing AI start-up xAI in 2023.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and owner of tech and social media company X, is a close ally of US President Donald Trump. He spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help elect Trump, and leads the Department of Government Efficiency, a new arm of the White House tasked with radically shrinking the federal bureaucracy. Musk recently criticised a US$500 billion OpenAI-led project announced by Trump at the White House.
Source: SCMP