By Manuel Ausloos and Krystal Hu
PARIS/NEW YORK (Reuters) -The nonprofit that controls ChatGPT maker OpenAI is not for sale, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told Reuters on Tuesday when asked about Elon Musk’s offer to buy it.
“I have nothing to say. I mean, it’s ridiculous,” Altman said on the sidelines of an AI summit in Paris.
A consortium led by Musk said on Monday it had offered $97.4 billion to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI, another salvo in the billionaire’s fight to block the artificial intelligence startup from transitioning to a for-profit firm.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the two sides could not agree on the status of the bid or even if it was ever received.
Musk’s lawyer, Marc Toberoff, told Reuters that he sent the offer by email on Monday to OpenAI’s outside counsel at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. A source close to OpenAI’s board said the board had not received any formal bid from the Musk side yet.
“The company is not for sale. It’s another one of his tactics to try to mess with us,” Altman said, referring to Musk.
In an internal message to OpenAI employees on Monday, Altman said the board, though it had not officially reviewed the offer, planned to reject it based on the interest of OpenAI’s mission.
Musk cofounded OpenAI with Altman in 2015 as a nonprofit, but left before the company took off due to a discrepancy in the company’s direction and funding sources with Sam Altman and other co-founders. In 2023, he launched the competing AI startup, xAI.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and owner of technology company X, is a close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump. He leads the Department of Government Efficiency, a new arm of the White House tasked with radically shrinking the federal bureaucracy.
OpenAI, in the process of raising $40 billion, is also seeking to transition into a for-profit from a nonprofit entity, which it says is required to secure the capital needed for developing the best AI models. The complicated transition involves putting a price tag on OpenAI’s non-profit control of the for-profit arm.
Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings has said she is reviewing OpenAI’s proposed changes to ensure the company is “adhering to its specific charitable purposes for the benefit of the public beneficiaries, as opposed to the commercial or private interests of OpenAI’s directors or partners.“
Legal experts said Musk’s bid complicates the fair value OpenAI has to decide for charitable assets in the conversion in exchange for giving up control.
“It does help set a price point for the thinking about the valuation of the nonprofit assets,” Robert Weissman, co-president at Public Citizen, the consumer rights watchdog told Reuters. “If it were to occur as proposed, the regulators have a duty to ensure that if there’s a sell-off of assets to a for-profit entity, that fair market value is obtained.”
(Reporting by Manuel Ausloos and Ingrid Melander in Paris and Krystal Hu in New York; Editing by Alison Williams, Catherine Evans, Matthew Lewis and Nick Zieminski)
