A team of investors led by Elon Musk has bid $ 97.4 billion to buy the assets of the OpenAi non -profit organization, according to two people familiar with the offer, escalating a year, deeply personal battle for The future of artificial intelligence between Mr Musk and Openai CEO Sam Altman.
The consortium includes Vy Capital and XAI, Mr Musk’s artificial intelligence company, as well as the bronze -authorized Hollywood Ari Emanuel and other investors, said the people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions continue. .
The Wall Street Journal reported news earlier about the offer.
The offer for Openai is Mr Musk’s last and perhaps more bold attack on an organization that helped create almost 10 years ago. Facing great yields: The OpenAi Board of Directors is closely linked to Mr Altman and the CEO was quickly ridiculed by Mr Musk’s offer.
“Not thank you, but we will buy Twitter for $ 9.74 billion if you want,” Mr Altman told X, referring to the old name for Mr Musk’s social media platform.
“Swindler,” Mr Musk replied.
Openai has not yet seen the offer, according to a person who is familiar with the potential response of Openai. Mr Musk’s unwanted offer could complicate Openai’s attempt to complete a $ 40 billion rally agreement that will almost double the high profile valuation of just four months ago.
The new round of capital rally, led by the Japanese complex Softbank, is worth the OpenAI at $ 300 billion, according to three people with the knowledge of the agreement on the condition of anonymity. The deal would make Openai one of the most valuable private companies in the world, along with Mr Musk’s Rocket Company and ByTedance, the manufacturer of Tiktok.
Softbank will invest up to $ 40 billion in Openai, with other investors providing about a quarter of total capital, people said. (The New York Times has sued Openai and her partner, Microsoft, supporting the copyright violations of the AI ​​-related news content.
Mr Musk’s offer could slow down a transition to the company that Mr Altman and other OpenAi executives work for more than a year.
Mr Musk, Mr Altman and several other businessmen and researchers founded Openai as a non -profit organization at the end of 2015, saying they wanted to share their technologies with the world freely. When Mr Musk left the organization three years later after a battle for control, Mr Altman joined Openai to a speculative company so that he could increase the huge amounts of money needed to build AI technologies.
But the non -profit council, in an unusual arrangement, continued to control Openai. At the end of 2023, the Board of Directors suddenly threw Mr Altman, saying that he was no longer entrusted to build the AI ​​for the benefit of mankind – one of the original principles of the non -profit organization. But the disappearance lasted only five days.
After returning, Mr Altman and his associates began to explore ways of disconnecting the inspection of the non -profit company. He also began stacking the Openai Board of Directors with his allies, offering a stronghold against other efforts to reject his control.
The structure of Openai is extremely complicated – and Mr Musk’s offer shows that he understands his weaknesses. In order to be separated from the non -profit council, Mr Altman and his colleagues must offset it: Openai can pay for example the non -profit end of a year or give it a minority to the company.
While Openai has more than 2,000 employees, the non -profit organization that controls that it only has two employees and $ 22 million in cash and other assets. The reason why Mr Musk and his investors will pay billions of it is that he has a legal control of Openai, which is valued at $ 300 billion in his last round.
But the assets of the non -profit organization have not been given value – and this is what Mr Musk is trying to create with his new offer. His offer could mean that the Openai arm will have to spend more to gain independence from the non -profit organization.
“If Sam Altman and this Board of Directors of Openai, Inc. intend to become a fully profitable company, it is vital to compensate the charity from our time,” said Marc Toberoff, a Los Angeles lawyer, who submitted A lawsuit against Openai on behalf of Mr Musk last year, he said in a statement to the New York Times.
The Board of Directors of the OpenAI non -profit company has a duty to sell its assets with fair market value, said Ellen P. Aprill, a senior scholar who studies the non -profit law of UCLA, who has written extensively about OPENAI. Mr Musk’s offer seems to set this value very high, he said. If the non -profit organization had to accept a lower price than Openai’s arm, it may need to explain to state charity regulators because it rejected a higher offer.
“It’s a huge complication for the current plan,” he added.
The proposal to shift Openai’s assets from the non -profit organization to the speculative is already under control by the state regulatory authorities in Delaware, where Openai is incorporated in California, where the company is headquartered.
Mr Musk, now one of President Trump’s closest advisers, set up his own AI company in 2023 to compete with the head with Openai. While this company, Xai, was slowly playing in a series of newly established businesses and technological giants, Mr Altman managed to overcome Mr Musk in Washington.
On the day that Mr Trump was inaugurated, he supported a plan by Openai, Japanese Softbank Conslomerate and Oracle software to spend $ 100 billion on new data centers. Mr Trump described the attempt as “the largest AI infrastructure project in history”.
On Monday, when Mr Musk was sent a letter of bid, Mr Altman was at a AI conference in Paris involving other technical and political leaders, including Emmanuel Macron, French President and Vice President JD Vance.
