The fiercest competition in the field of artificial intelligence in Silicon Valley is heating up. According to The Wall Street Journal, Elon Musk has made a $97.4 billion offer to buy the non-profit arm of OpenAI. The offer was presented to OpenAI’s board of directors on Monday morning.
Musk has also attracted strong partners in the offer, including xAI, Valor Equity Partners, Hollywood producer Ari Emanuel and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale’s 8VC investment fund.
The offer comes at a critical time for OpenAI. The company’s CEO Sam Altman is already busy managing several major deals: turning the company into a commercial entity, raising $40 billion in investment at a valuation of $340 billion, and launching a $500 billion AI infrastructure project.
For Musk, the offer appears to be an attempt to ensure that OpenAI returns to its original, open-source, security-focused mission. Musk co-founded OpenAI with Altman in 2015, but left the company in 2019. He is currently suing OpenAI, alleging that the company has strayed from its core mission.
“OpenAI needs to be re-opened and a security-focused force,” Musk told The Wall Street Journal through his lawyer, Mark Toberof. “We will make sure that happens,” he added.
The offer complicates the process of transitioning OpenAI to a commercial model that Musk’s team has planned for itself. Musk’s team has said that they will meet or beat even a higher offer. This creates new challenges for Altman, who is already in talks with Microsoft and other partners about a commercial structure.
Shortly after the news broke, Altman posted on the social network X (formerly Twitter): “No, thanks. But if you want, we’ll buy Twitter for $9.74 billion.”
