The proposal has already been rejected by Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. Musk’s plan was to merge the ChatGpt company into xAI, his artificial intelligence startup | Elon Musk offers $97.4 billion for control of OpenAI.
Elon Musk will withdraw the offer of 97.4 billion dollars for OpenAI. If the ChatGpt company will give up transforming itself into a for-profit entity. The proposal is contained in a document that Musk’s lawyers filed in court on February 12. But in the same hours OpenAI also appeared before the judges. With a letter that branded the initiative of the Tesla boss as “an improper offer to damage a competitor .”
Elon Musk vs Sam Altman
The decision by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to change the nature of the company, founded in 2015 as a non-profit, is at the center of a legal dispute launched in February 2024 by Musk himself. Altman – according to the Tesla CEO – would have betrayed the original mission of the former startup. That is, to build artificial intelligence systems for the benefit of humanity. Making it “a de facto subsidiary” of Microsoft , from which OpenAI has received funding for over 13 billion.
As a result, the latest round of litigation between the two former partners (Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI before leaving the company in 2018) has also ended up in court.
Musk’s mega offer
On February 10, the Tesla CEO offered $97.4 billion to take control of OpenAI , valued at nearly $300 billion . Along with a group of investors (Valor Equity Partners, Baron Capital, Atreides Management, Vy Capital and 8VC). The offer was immediately rejected by Altman who responded on X: «No thanks, but we will buy X (Musk’s starting in 2022, ed.) for $9.74 billion if you want».
Musk’s plan was to merge OpenAI into xAI, the company he founded in 2024 specifically to compete with Altman. However, there is much speculation about the billionaire’s real intentions and the implications of the offer. For instance, analysts at Oppenheimer perceived it as “a diversion from Tesla’s obstacles.”
Diverting attention from the electric car company, however, could be risky. “The offer could appear to be a distraction for Musk and increase sales on Tesla . Which showed a sharp drop in registrations in January,” hypothesizes Filippo Diodovich , senior market strategist at Ig Italia. A diversion that, according to Dan Gallagher, is not sustainable: ” Tesla cannot afford another distraction of the size of X ,” writes the Wall Street Journal editorialist . The reference is to the operation with which Musk purchased the former Twitter, in 2022, paying the monstrous sum of 44 billion dollars. https://youtu.be/Kv8NFsGjpew?si=R8E30EM7GWM3n6h9