A group of investors led by Elon Musk has offered approximately $ 97.4 billion to buy the non -profit organization behind OpenAI, intensifying a dispute with the artificial intelligence company that Musk helped found a decade ago.
Musk and his own AI company, called XAI, along with a consortium of investment firms, They want to take control of the creator of Chatgpt and reverse it to its original mission of being a non -profit research laboratoryaccording to Marc Toberoff, Musk’s lawyer.
The general director of OpenAI, Sam Altmanquickly rejected the offered offer using X, Musk’s social platform: “No, thanks, but we will buy Twitter for $ 9,740 million if you want”.
Musk acquired Twitter, now called X, for $ 44,000 million in 2022.
Musk and Altman, who together helped to launch Openai in 2015 and later competed about who should lead it, They have been in a dispute over the company’s address since Musk resigned from their Board in 2018.
Musk, one of OpenAI’s first investors and a member of the Board of Directors, sued the company last year, first in a State Court in California and then in a federal court, claiming that he had betrayed his foundational objectives as a research laboratory Non -profit focused on the public good by developing a better than human. Musk had invested around $ 45 million in the startup from its foundation until 2018, Toboff said.
The sudden success of Chatgpt two years ago brought worldwide fame and a new source of income for OpenAi, and also intensified the internal battles about the future of the organization and the advanced AI that tried to develop. His non -profit board fired Altman at the end of 2023. He returned days later with a new meeting.
Now, being a rapidly growing business still controlled by a non -profit board committed to its original mission, Openai announced plans to formally change its corporate structure last year. But such changes are complicated. The Tax Law requires that money or assets donated to an exempt tax organization remain within the charitable sector.
If the initial organization becomes a company for profit, generally, a conversion is needed where the profit company pays the fair market value of the assets to another charitable organization. Even if the non -profit OpenAI continues to exist in some way, some experts argue that it would have to be compensated with the fair market value by any asset that is transferred to its profitable subsidiaries.
Openai and Musk’s lawyers faced each other in a Federal Court in California last week while a judge considered Musk’s request for a court order that prevents the Chatgpt creator from becoming a profit company.
The federal judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has not yet failed on Musk’s request, but in court he said that it was “exaggerated” that Musk affirmed that he would suffer irreparable damage if she does not intervene to prevent Openai from progressing with her planned transition towards becoming A for profit corporation.
However, the judge also expressed concerns about Openai and her commercial relationship with Microsoft, and said she would not prevent the case from going to trial so that a jury can decide.
“It is plausible that what Mr. Musk says is true. We will find out. He will sit at the stretch “said.
In addition to Musk and XAI, others that support the purchase offer are Baron Capital Group, Management Value, Date Management, Vy Fund, Emanuel Capital Management and Eight Partners VC.
Toberoff said in a statement that if Altman and the current Board of Openai “are determined to become a completely for profit corporation, it is vital that the charitable organization is compensated precisely by what its leadership is taking away: control over technology more transformative of our time ”.
Musk’s lawyer also shared a letter that he sent in early January to the general prosecutors of California, where Openai operates, and Delaware, where it is constituted.
Since both state prosecutors must “ensure that any transactional process related to OpenAI charitable assets provide at least the fair market value to protect the public interest of the public, we assume that they will provide a process for a competitive tender that really determines that value Just market, ”Toboff wrote, asking for more information on the terms and time of that bidding process.