Elon Musk says he'll stop trying to buy OpenAI if it stays a nonprofit
Elon Musk said he'll withdraw his $97.4 billion bid to buy OpenAI if the ChatGPT maker stops trying to become a for-profit company.
The latest installment in the Musk versus OpenAI saga comes from a court filing submitted on Wednesday, caught by CNBC. "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," read the filing submitted in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California. "Otherwise, the charity must be compensated by what an arms-length buyer will pay for its assets."
On Monday, Musk and a group of investors made an unsolicited bid to buy OpenAI, which currently exists as a capped-profit subsidiary governed by a nonprofit structure but is trying to convert to a conventional for-profit company. Musk was involved with the nonprofit, which launched in 2015, and says he donated $50 million in its early days. Then, OpenAI converted to its current capped profit structure in 2019 and has been trying to convert to a fully for-profit company since September 2024.
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Upon this news, Musk sued OpenAI, alleging breach of contract for violating its mission promise to be a nonprofit open-source research firm for altruistically developing AGI (artificial general intelligence).
Fast-forward to this week: In an X post on Monday, Altman rejected Musk's bid to buy OpenAI, writing, "No thank you, but we will buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want."
To complicate matters further, Musk has his own competing AI company, xAI, which makes the X chatbot Grok. "I think [the lawsuit is] to slow down a competitor and catch up with his thing, but I don’t really know," Altman told a CNBC reporter at the AI Action Summit in Paris on Tuesday.
Altman also said he is "not particularly" taking the bid seriously. Yet Musk and his team insist the offer is serious if OpenAI is allowed to convert to for-profit and "should... the charity’s assets proceed to sale."
Cecily is a tech reporter at Mashable who covers AI, Apple, and emerging tech trends. Before getting her master's degree at Columbia Journalism School, she spent several years working with startups and social impact businesses for Unreasonable Group and B Lab. Before that, she co-founded a startup consulting business for emerging entrepreneurial hubs in South America, Europe, and Asia. You can find her on X at @cecily_mauran.
