- Elon Musk said he will drop his offer to buy OpenAI if the company maintains its nonprofit status. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called the offer itself “ridiculous,” saying the company is not for sale.
- Musk cofounded the company alongside Altman and others, but since leaving, the relationship has been contentious and litigious.
- If Musk’s offer isn’t withdrawn, OpenAI’s board will need to consider its value.
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Elon Musk’s investor group claims it will withdraw its $97.4 billion bid to buy ChatGPT-maker OpenAI if OpenAI drops its plan to shift to a for-profit model. However, the company said it’s not for sale and called the offer “an improper bid to undermine a competitor.”
“If OpenAI, Inc.’s Board is prepared to preserve the charity’s mission and stipulate to take the ‘for sale’ sign off its assets by halting its conversion, Musk will withdraw the bid,” lawyers for Musk wrote in a court filing late Wednesday, Feb. 12.
“OpenAI is meant to be [an] open-source nonprofit, and now it is closed,” Musk said during a virtual appearance at the World Governments Summit in Dubai early Thursday, Feb. 13. “They changed the name to closed for maximum profit, AI closed for voracious profit.”
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A consortium led by Musk put in the offer to buy the AI heavyweight on Monday, Feb. 10. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman indicated he never took it seriously.
“It’s ridiculous,” Altman said on the sidelines of the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris. “The company is not for sale. It’s like another one of his tactics to try to mess with us.”
The Musk-Altman feud over OpenAI goes back years
Musk cofounded OpenAI and said he provided the first $50 million of the company’s funding. Musk eventually left the company after disagreeing with his co-founders about the future direction of the company.
“OpenAI has gotten this far while having at least a sort of dual profit, nonprofit role,” Musk said Thursday. “What they’re trying to do now is completely delete the nonprofit, and that seems really going too far.”
“I provided all of the funding for opening at the beginning, for the first almost $50 million for nothing, for a nonprofit, and it was meant to be open source,” he continued. “I think this is analogous too. If you fund a nonprofit to preserve the Amazon rainforest, but instead, they turn into a lumber company and chop down the trees and sell them for wood, you’ll be like, ‘Wait a second, that’s the exact opposite of what I donated the money for.’”
What are OpenAI’s for-profit plans?
Since its founding in 2015, the AI innovator has been a nonprofit. In 2019, the company added a “capped profit” arm that was still controlled by the nonprofit’s board of directors. Musk twice sued OpenAI for branching out into the profit business, most recently in August 2024.
The next month, it was reported Altman was working to restructure into a for-profit company. The transition would eliminate the nonprofit arm’s control over the for-profit business.
“The nonprofit will continue as a very, very strong thing,” Altman told reporters in Paris this week. “The mission is really important, and we’re totally focused on making sure we preserve that.”
Altman conceded OpenAI “should probably open source somewhat more.”
In December 2024, OpenAI challenged Musk’s claims of AI altruism. The company said in a blog post that Elon Musk years ago wanted to make OpenAI for-profit.
During an interview at The New York Times’ Dealbook Summit, Altman also claimed it moved toward a for-profit model after Musk decided to stop funding the company as a nonprofit.
If Musk’s offer to buy OpenAI remains on the docket, OpenAI’s board will need to consider the offer and its value. That is because in order to turn OpenAI into a for-profit endeavor, Altman essentially needs to buy out the nonprofit arm’s controlling interest.
