Sam Altman reiterates OpenAI 'not for sale' after Elon Musk-led bid

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OpenAI boss Sam Altman has reiterated the AI giant is “not for sale” after an Elon Musk-led group of investors offered more than 97 billion dollars (£78.4bn) for the firm.

After news of the 97.4bn dollar offer for OpenAI broke on Monday night, Mr Altman said on X: “No thank you but we will buy twitter for 9.74 billion dollars if you want.”

Speaking to Sky News at the AI Action Summit in Paris, Mr Altman repeated that dig at long-standing rival Mr Musk by adding that OpenAI was “happy to buy Twitter though”.

In further remarks to Axios, Mr Altman said: “There’s been versions of Elon trying to somehow take control of OpenAI for a long time, so, okay, here’s this week’s episode.

“OpenAI is not for sale. OpenAI’s mission is not for sale – to say nothing of the fact that, like, a competitor who is not able to beat us in the market and you know, instead is just trying to say, like, ‘I’m gonna buy this’ with total disregard for the mission is a likely path there.”

The two men helped found OpenAI in 2015 and later competed over who should lead it, and have been in a long-running feud over the start-up’s direction since Mr Musk resigned from its board in 2018.

Mr Musk sued the artificial intelligence company last year, first in a California state court and later in US federal court, alleging it had betrayed its founding aims as a non-profit research lab benefiting the public good.

The Tesla and SpaceX boss has his own AI start-up, xAI.

Today, OpenAI consists of a non-profit entity and a for-profit subsidiary, which is overseen by the non-profit board.

Mr Musk’s lawyer said when submitting his bid that the Tesla boss wanted to restore the ChatGPT maker to its original form as a non-profit research lab.

Mr Altman is said to be restructuring the company and will ultimately make it an entirely for-profit entity, something the firm has argued is needed to secure the funds to develop the best AI models.

Asked if Mr Musk’s intervention could make it harder for the for-profit arm of OpenAI to take over, Mr Altman said: “The board will decide what to do there.

“The non-profit will continue as a very, very strong thing. The mission is really important and we’re just really focused on making sure that we consider that.”

OpenAI is seen as the key factor in the current AI boom, having brought the technology underpinning it, generative AI, to the mainstream when it launched its ChatGPT chatbot in late 2022.