Sam Altman has reportedly declared that the OpenAI board will reject a bid by an Elon Musk-led group of investors to buy the artificial intelligence company for about $100bn.
Mr Altman told staff in a memo on Monday that the board of directors is clear that the company has no interest in the "supposed bid" by Mr Musk’s group, the Information reported.
A consortium led by the Tesla boss on Monday offered $97.4bn to buy OpenAI. “It is time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was,” Mr Musk said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal. “We will make sure that happens.”
Mr Altman quickly rejected the proposal. “No thank you, but we will buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want,” he said.
The Tesla chief responded with a jab, calling Mr Altman a “swindler”.
The two tech chiefs have been engaged in a running feud since the launch of OpenAI, which Mr Musk helped found in 2015. OpenAI was created as a nonprofit to ensure that AI would benefit all humanity. But Mr Altman steadily turned the company more commercial, upsetting Mr Musk who left its board in 2018 after a reported power struggle.
OpenAI became an AI pioneer in 2022 when it launched ChatGPT, a chatbot capable of understanding and generating human-like responses to user queries.
The release of the chatbot led to a wave of investment pouring into the AI firm from the likes of tech giants Microsoft.
After its last funding round, the AI firm was valued at $157 billion.
Japan’s SoftBank Group is now reportedly in talks to lead another funding round of up to $40 billion at a company valuation of $300 billion, Reuters reported.
After leaving OpenAI, Mr Musk proceeded to create his own for-profit artificial intelligence firm called xAI. He also launched legal action against OpenAI, claiming it had betrayed its founding principles and the terms of his original donations.
In November, the multibillionaire asked a US district judge for a preliminary injunction blocking OpenAI from converting to a for-profit structure.
Analysts say the new bid may complicate matters further for OpenAI by interrupting its current fundraising process.
"The offer seems to be backed by more credible investors,” Gil Luria, an analyst at DA Davidson told Reuters. “OpenAI may not be able to ignore it. It will be the fiduciary responsibility of OpenAI’s board to decide whether this is a better offer, which could call into question the offer from SoftBank.”
"This is definitely throwing a wrench in things," Yale Law School professor Jonathan Macey said of the bid.
This article was written by Vishwam Sankaran from The Independent and was legally licensed through the DiveMarketplace by Industry Dive. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@industrydive.com.