The CEO of OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, Sam Altman, has rejected a $97.4 billion (£78.4 billion) offer from a group of investors led by Elon Musk to acquire the company.
Marc Toberoff, Musk’s lawyer, said that he presented the tech company’s board with his offer for “all assets” on Monday.
The offer is the most recent development in a long-running dispute between Open AI CEO Sam Altman and Musk, the richest man in the world and US President Donald Trump’s right hand, over the future of the start-up at the heart of the AI boom.
Altman said on Musk’s social networking site X in response to the bid: “No thank you, but if you want, we can buy Twitter for $9.74 billion.”
The proposed takeover is not necessarily doomed because he rejected the deal.
The board of directors of OpenAI will have a role in the company’s destiny and might support a sale, particularly if the price is raised.
But there are also concerns about whether Musk is sincere about buying the company and whether the offer is a genuine aspect of the two men’s ongoing court dispute.
Since the Tesla and X CEO left the company in 2018, the relationship between Musk and Altman, who co-founded the start-up in 2015 as a non-profit, has worsened.
Musk claims that Altman has abandoned the company’s original goal of creating AI for the good of humanity by reorganising it to become a for-profit business and removing its non-profit board.
However, OpenAI contends that in order to raise the funds necessary to create the finest artificial intelligence models, it must become a for-profit company.
In an interview with the BBC, Christie Pitts, a tech investor in start-up companies at Panasonic Well in San Francisco, expressed her doubts about Musk’s intentions.
“I think it’s fair to be pretty suspicious of this considering that he has a competitor himself… which is structured as a for-profit company, so I think there’s more than meets the eye here,” she stated to the BBC.
The corporation was valued at $157 billion in its most recent investment round in October of last year, which is significantly more than the offer presented at $97.4 billion. It is currently valued at $300 billion, according to discussions about a new funding round.
The group would be “prepared to consider matching or exceeding” any possible larger bid, according to a statement from Mr. Toberoff.
On behalf of Musk and other investors, Musk’s lawyer stated, “As the co-founder of OpenAI and the most inventive and prosperous tech industry leader in history, Musk is the person best positioned to protect and grow OpenAI’s technology.”
In addition, ChatGPT’s developer is collaborating with Oracle, another major US IT company, a Japanese investment business, and an Emirati sovereign wealth fund to construct $500 billion worth of AI infrastructure in the US.
President Donald Trump unveiled the new business, The Stargate Project, at the White House, calling it “the largest AI infrastructure project by far in history” and claiming it will help preserve “the future of technology” in the United States.
Despite being one of Trump’s top advisors, Musk has stated that the company does not “actually have the money” it has promised to invest. However, he has not offered any supporting information or explanations for his claims.
