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| Billionaire Elon Musk co-founded OpenAI but withdrew in 2019. (Source: Getty Images) |
According to The Guardian , on February 10, billionaire Elon Musk - backed by a number of powerful investors such as Hollywood mogul Ari Emanuel and 8VC company of Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of Palantir - announced that he had submitted to OpenAI's Board of Directors a bid for "all assets" of this artificial intelligence company, with a proposed price of 97.4 billion USD.
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The move by the billionaire Musk-led alliance comes at a pivotal time for OpenAI, and was described by the Wall Street Journal as "a dramatic escalation in Silicon Valley's fiercest artificial intelligence (AI) competition."
CEO Sam Altman, who is already dealing with major financial plans like converting OpenAI into a for-profit company, raising $40 billion to reach a $340 billion valuation, and launching the $500 billion Stargate infrastructure project, may have added to his headache with the unexpected offer.
However, Mr. Altman immediately posted his reaction on X after the news broke, stating: "No thanks, but we will buy X for $9.74 billion if you want." Billionaire Musk is famous for buying social network Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion and renaming it X.
Billionaire Elon Musk co-founded OpenAI, but he stepped down in 2019 and started his own AI company called xAI. He has battled with CEO Altman over the company’s direction for years, suing OpenAI over its restructuring plans last year, dropping the lawsuit, then re-filing it.
The new offer is seen as a bold move by Mr. Musk to challenge “OpenAI’s betrayal” of its original mission of developing AI in a safe, open, and non-profit manner. “It’s time for OpenAI to return to open source, with a focus on safety, as it was before,” Mr. Musk said in a statement. “We will make sure that happens.”
OpenAI, meanwhile, maintains that the restructuring is necessary for the company’s longevity and access to capital. The company says that if it maintains its current nonprofit structure, it will not be able to keep up in the highly competitive world of AI innovation. OpenAI says it plans to restructure by 2026.
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