Somehow, in between gutting the federal government and running Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk has found time to launch a $97.4 billion takeover bid for OpenAI, said Kelsey Piper in Vox. That seemingly lowball offer — the ChatGPT-maker is thought to be worth more than $300 billion — was quickly rejected by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman last week. "No thank you," he wrote on the Musk-owned X platform, formerly Twitter. "But we will buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want."
While Musk's takeover proposal is likely dead, it could "still have big implications for perhaps the most important company in artificial intelligence," said Piper. That's because Musk was bidding for the nonprofit entity that controls OpenAI's for-profit business and which was founded with the mission to "ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity." Altman is under intense pressure from investors such as Microsoft to convert the entire operation into a for-profit venture, which would let it raise more capital. "The current rumor is that the new for-profit entity would compensate the nonprofit with about $40 billion for its assets." But after Musk's nearly $100 billion bid, the nonprofit is effectively duty-bound to sell for at least that, making any conversion much more expensive for Altman.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
"This isn't a good versus evil battle," said Allison Morrow in CNN.com. Altman is not an "antidote to Musk's megalomania — for all we know, he's just a younger, more charming version of it." In this clash of tech titans, the only side to root for "is the side of struggle." If Musk were to gain control of OpenAI and merge it with xAI, the resulting behemoth would crush all competition, slow innovation, and be too big to regulate. "Consolidation in an industry as young as AI is a recipe for unchecked power, and Musk certainly doesn't need any more of that."
-
‘The West needs people’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Filing statuses: What they are and how to choose one for your taxesThe Explainer Your status will determine how much you pay, plus the tax credits and deductions you can claim
-
Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency – an ‘engrossing’ exhibitionThe Week Recommends All 126 images from the American photographer’s ‘influential’ photobook have come to the UK for the first time
-
AI: Dr. ChatGPT will see you nowFeature AI can take notes—and give advice
-
Moltbook: the AI social media platform with no humans allowedThe Explainer From ‘gripes’ about human programmers to creating new religions, the new AI-only network could bring us closer to the point of ‘singularity’
-
Claude Code: Anthropic’s wildly popular AI coding appThe Explainer Engineers and noncoders alike are helping the app go viral
-
Will regulators put a stop to Grok’s deepfake porn images of real people?Today’s Big Question Users command AI chatbot to undress pictures of women and children
-
Most data centers are being built in the wrong climateThe explainer Data centers require substantial water and energy. But certain locations are more strained than others, mainly due to rising temperatures.
-
The dark side of how kids are using AIUnder the Radar Chatbots have become places where children ‘talk about violence, explore romantic or sexual roleplay, and seek advice when no adult is watching’
-
Why 2025 was a pivotal year for AITalking Point The ‘hype’ and ‘hopes’ around artificial intelligence are ‘like nothing the world has seen before’
-
AI griefbots create a computerized afterlifeUnder the Radar Some say the machines help people mourn; others are skeptical
