Artificial intelligence ChatGPT developer company rebuffs Musk with purchase offer
ChatGPT inventor OpenAI has shot down Elon Musk's almost 100 billion dollar takeover bid. The board of directors of the AI start-up has unanimously voted against it, announced OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
14.02.2025, 23:46
14.02.2025, 23:49
SDA
"OpenAI is not for sale," he wrote on Musk's online platform X. A group of investors led by tech billionaire Elon Musk announced the offer of 97.4 billion dollars at the beginning of the week.
Altman immediately criticized it as an attempt to thwart a competitor. Musk, who was once one of the founders of OpenAI, now has his own AI company, xAI. AI stands for artificial intelligence.
Attack on the restructuring of OpenAI
OpenAI is currently in the process of changing its structure and transforming itself into a profit-oriented company. Musk is already fighting the start-up in court to prevent this. Among other things, he is claiming that he was cheated when he left the company.
The investor group is bidding for the non-profit organization that previously controlled OpenAI. The original goal of OpenAI was to develop artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity. Altman also founded a for-profit subsidiary in 2019 to raise money from investors such as Microsoft. Now OpenAI as a whole is to become a profit-oriented company. Some former employees warned that this move could increase the risks involved in AI development.
Musk's offer sets the bar for OpenAI's value
Even though OpenAI rejected Musk's advances, his move still makes the restructuring a little more complicated. This is because the non-profit organization is to receive a stake in the for-profit OpenAI as part of the restructuring. Negotiations are currently underway with early investors in the start-up, including Microsoft. Industry observers assume that it could become a 25 percent share. With his bid, Musk has now set a high bar for the value of this stake, which OpenAI can hardly fall short of.
A good two years ago, the AI chatbot ChatGPT triggered a hype around artificial intelligence - with expectations ranging from almost unlimited possibilities in the digital world to fears of the extinction of humanity.
