OpenAI CEO Sam Altman dismissed Elon Musk’s unsolicited $97.4 billion takeover bid.
Altman told media at an AI summit in Paris that OpenAI and its mission are “not for sale.”
Musk, who co-founded OpenAI, has long criticized its for-profit transition.
Sam Altman has reiterated that OpenAI is “not for sale” following an unsolicited $97.4 billion bid to buy it from an Elon Musk-led investor group.
Altman doubled down on his stance to multiple media outlets at an AI summit in Paris, telling Sky News, “The company is not for sale, neither is the mission.”
Asked whether OpenAI could afford to resist Musk’s bid to buy it, he responded, “The board will decide what to do there.”
Speaking to Axios at the same event, Altman said, “There’s been like versions of Elon trying to, you know, somehow take control of OpenAI for a long time, so, it’s like, okay, here’s this week’s episode.”
It follows Monday’s back-and-forth on X between Altman and Musk over the latter’s $97.4 billion bid for control of the company behind ChatGPT.
Musk and a group of investors, including his AI company X.AI, submitted the offer to the OpenAI board on Monday. Marc Toberoff, a lawyer representing the group, confirmed the offer in a statement provided to Business Insider. The statement said the offer was for “all assets” of OpenAI, Inc.
“At x.AI, we live by the values I was promised OpenAI would follow. We’ve made Grok open source, and we respect the rights of content creators,” Musk said in the statement. “It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was. We will make sure that happens.”
In October OpenAI was valued at $157 billion during a funding round that raised $6.6 billion. BI reported in January that SoftBank, a Japanese investment holding company, was preparing to make an investment in OpenAI in a deal that would value the company at around $300 billion.
Backers of the bid — which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal — include Baron Capital Group, Inc., Valor Management LLC, Atreides Management, LP, Vy Fund III, L.P., Emanuel Capital Management, LLC, and Eight Partners VC, LLC.
The Journal reported that the investor group bid to acquire the OpenAI nonprofit, which controls the rest of OpenAI. Altman wants to convert the startup to a for-profit company, but to do so, the charitable arm must be compensated for its assets. Settling on a fair value for these assets is complex.
The Musk investor group said in a statement on Monday that their bid for OpenAI is designed to ensure that the charitable arm’s assets are fairly valued and that it gets paid appropriately before any conversion to a for-profit business. “As we understand the OpenAI, Inc. Board’s present intentions, they will give up majority ownership and control over OpenAI’s entire for-profit business in exchange for some minority share of a new, consolidated for-profit entity. Who on Earth would make that trade?” Toberoff, the lawyer representing the investors, said in a statement.
“If the Board is determined to relinquish OpenAI, Inc.’s assets, it is in the public’s interest to ensure that OpenAI, Inc. is compensated at fair market value. That value cannot be determined by insiders negotiating on both sides of the same table,” he continued.
