Elon Musk Offers Nearly $100 Billion to Acquire OpenAI
American billionaire Elon Musk, leading a group of investors, has made a $97.4 billion offer to acquire the nonprofit organization that controls the artificial intelligence tool, OpenAI.
The unsolicited bid from the owner of X (formerly Twitter) and SpaceX comes as OpenAI, the nonprofit company behind ChatGPT, battles in court for the status of a for-profit entity, the Wall Street Journal revealed on Monday.
The organization’s owner, Sam Altman, has devised a plan in this direction and engaged the company in a joint venture with SoftBank and Oracle, aiming to invest approximately $500 billion in colossal AI infrastructure.
The investor consortium includes Vy Capital and Xai, the AI company led by Musk, along with Hollywood businessman Ari Emanuel and other investors, according to the business daily.
“It is time for OpenAI to become the security-focused open-source force it once was,” Musk stated in a press release, promising to “ensure that it happens.”
Altman and Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as a charitable organization. In 2019, after Musk’s departure, Altman established a for-profit subsidiary of OpenAI that served as a vehicle for raising funds from multiple investors.
