The feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, the founder of Open AI, has reached a new level. Elon Musk has formed an investment consortium. He has made a bid of $97.4 billion to buy the non-profit company. An incredible number, indeed. This offer has, of course, escalated the tension between Elon Musk and Sam Altman over the future of Open AI, the company behind Chat GPT. Marc Toberoff, Musk’s legal representative, announced on Monday that they have submitted the offer to the board of directors of Open AI in order to purchase the assets of the non-profit organization. This unexpected move also disrupts Altman’s strategy of turning Open AI into a for-profit company and investing $500 billion in artificial intelligence infrastructure through a joint venture called Stargate. As I mentioned before, Sam Altman and Elon Musk are in a legal dispute over the future of Open AI. This has actually been going on for a while now.
Musk said in a statement made through Toberoff that Open AI should return to its initial goal of developing open source security-focused artificial intelligence. He said that we are making this purchase offer for that purpose. Sam Altman gave an entertaining answer of course. He said thank you but let's not buy it, if you want we can buy Twitter from you for $9.74 billion. In other words, he says and makes fun of Musk's offer of $97.4 billion. He says if you want to sell X to me for $9.74 billion. In other words, Altman says and makes fun of Elon Musk's offer of $97.4 billion, "Give me Twitter for a tenth of that."
In fact, these two used to be on very good terms. They founded Open AI as a non-profit organization in 2015, and at that time they were both worried that artificial intelligence would fall into the wrong hands or become uncontrolled. Then Sam Altman got mad and asked for more money. They started fighting with Musk on this issue and Elon Musk withdrew from the company in 2018. However, Musk has a share in the initial seed capital of the company and it is thought that Musk's persuasion power was very useful in bringing good managers there later. Altman established a for-profit subsidiary company to open this non-profit company issue and his plan was to gradually give control of the main company, the non-profit company, to that. In this context, he is constantly in investment rounds. There are investments in this non-profit company and he says he will control it from there. But for this, this non-profit company needs to be transformed and sold to this new company. There are also some legal issues there.
Musk's $97.4 billion proposal has obviously changed things a lot. Because don't forget that there are many employees and managers in that non-profit company. Of course, they may have suddenly become furious. Because there is a huge amount of money here and I think this huge amount of money may lead to the formation of a new balance of power in Open AI's management structure. Musk's offer is backed by major investors such as XAI, Valor Equity Partners and Baron Capital. As you know, XAI is Elon Musk's company. Toberoff is making very ambitious statements in the meantime, saying that if higher offers come, we are ready to meet or exceed them. In other words, he is cornering Open AI here and saying that you will sell this company to me, or at least pushing the price up for those who want to be a partner in Open AI.
Elon Musk's legal claims accuse Open AI of abandoning its philanthropic mission and colluding with Microsoft to eliminate competitors in the field of artificial intelligence. Elon Musk is not alone in this. Meanwhile, Meta has made similar complaints and said that Open AI's non-profit structure should be preserved. Open AI, on the other hand, categorically rejects Musk's claims and says that the non-profit structure will be fully compensated with the shares it will own after the division. In other words, he is saying that we will not harm them and will continue on our way. These create a lot of uncertainty, but Open AI is still looking for investment. It is looking for investment with a valuation of $300 billion. Major investors like Softbank are expected to invest around $15-20 billion. Of course, Musk's surprise offer has made things even more confusing.
My comment is as follows; Elon Musk, go back and take care of Tesla. Tesla has some problems, it is clearly delayed, on Tuesday, new news broke about BYD's delays regarding autonomous driving. In other words, the problem has started to grow on that front as well. There were already problems with car sales. Elon Musk seems to be dispersing a lot, on the other hand, as you know, he has a very important role in the state. Let's see how things go, but on the other hand, I don't trust Sam Altman and Open AI at all. That's why I like this push and pull a little bit. Maybe other artificial intelligence companies or new entrepreneurs like Chinese DeepSeek can stand out from the crowd.
