Winning Bizness Desk

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has made a $9.74 billion (₹84,600 crore) offer to acquire artificial intelligence company OpenAI. Musk's AI company, xAI, along with investors like Valor Equity Partners and Baron Capital, has put forward this proposal.

However, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman rejected the offer with a sarcastic response on X (formerly Twitter), saying, "No, thank you. But if you (Musk) want, we are ready to buy Twitter (now X) for the same $9.74 billion." In reply, Musk called Altman "Scam Altman" on social media.

Musk wants to make OpenAI a non-profit research lab again

Musk has expressed his desire to bring OpenAI back to its original mission—an open-source, safety-focused AI research lab. He stated, "It is time for OpenAI to return to its non-profit roots, and we will ensure that happens." According to The Wall Street Journal, Musk's lawyer Mark Toberoff formally submitted this offer to OpenAI’s board on Monday.

Musk and Altman, along with nine other co-founders, established OpenAI in 2015. However, Musk left the organization in 2018. In 2023, he launched xAI, a rival AI startup to compete with OpenAI.

In 2024, Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the company and some of its executives of violating their original agreement. He claimed that OpenAI had abandoned its non-profit principles and was now operating as a commercial enterprise.

Currently, OpenAI follows a "capped-profit" model, meaning that investors can earn only limited profits. According to CNBC, SoftBank is reportedly planning to invest $40 billion (₹3.4 lakh crore) in OpenAI, valuing the company at $260 billion (₹22 lakh crore).

OpenAI: The company behind ChatGPT

OpenAI is best known as the parent company of ChatGPT, an AI chatbot that was launched in November 2022. ChatGPT quickly gained popularity due to its ability to write essays, generate poetry, compose music, and hold human-like conversations.

Musk bought twitter for $44 billion

In October 2022, Elon Musk acquired Twitter (now X) for $44 billion (₹3.8 lakh crore). Since then, he has made several major changes to the platform. After taking control of Twitter, Musk immediately fired four top executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, Legal Head Vijaya Gadde, and Senior Counsel Sean Edgett. At that time, Twitter had 7,500 employees, but Musk cut the workforce down to around 2,500. Musk's long-term vision for X is to transform it into an "everything app", similar to WeChat in China.

Musk and Altman clash over the $500 billion Stargate Project

Musk and Altman are also at odds over former U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposed $500 billion AI infrastructure project, "Stargate." Musk has raised doubts about SoftBank’s ability to handle this large-scale AI project. On the other hand, Altman has defended Stargate, dismissing Musk’s concerns as misguided. While Altman is a key partner in the project, Musk is closely aligned with the Trump administration.