Topline
Billionaire Elon Musk and other investors made a $97.4 billion unsolicited bid to buy the nonprofit group that controls OpenAI, escalating a longstanding feud between Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman—though Altman quickly rejected the offer on X, Musk’s social media site, and mocked the platform.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks as he attends at the Kakao media day with Kakao CEO Shina Chung in … [+]
Key Facts
The offer from Musk—who co-founded OpenAI with Altman and others in 2015 but is now in a legal battle with the CEO—was first reported by The Wall Street Journal and potentially added a complication to Altman’s plans to make OpenAI a for-profit company.
Musk’s attorney, Marc Toberoff, told Forbes in a statement that if Altman and OpenAI’s board “is intent on becoming a fully for-profit corporation, it is vital that the charity be fairly compensated for what its leadership is taking away from it: control over the most transformative technology of our time.”
Through Toberoff, Musk said in a statement to Forbes: “It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was.”
Less than an hour after the Journal’s report that Musk submitted the offer, Altman took to X—formerly known as Twitter until Musk purchased and rebranded it—to say: “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.”
Musk then responded to Altman’s tweet and called him a “swindler.”
This story is developing and will be updated.
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Forbes Valuation
We estimate Musk has a net worth of $391.3 billion as of Monday afternoon, making him the wealthiest person in the world. Altman has an estimated net worth of $1.2 billion.
