Elon Musk Just Handed OpenAI An Ultimatum

A recent report revealed that a consortium led by Elon Musk had placed a $97.4 billion bid on OpenAI. According to OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman, it seems that the company has no intention of entertaining the bid. Now it looks like Musk is willing to back off, but he has handed the company an ultimatum.

Go non-profit, or else…

According to a court filing on Wednesday, lawyers for Musk said that the billionaire is willing to withdraw his bid for OpenAI. However, this withdrawal comes with strings. It seems that if OpenAI wants Musk off their backs in a potential takeover of the company, the board of directors will need to “preserve the charity’s mission” and stop their change to a for-profit status.

The filing reads, “Should […] the charity’s assets proceed to sale, a Musk-led consortium has submitted a serious offer […] that would go to the charity in furtherance of its mission. [However, 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.”

Musk’s bid

For those unfamiliar, Musk and Altman co-founded OpenAI together as a non-profit organization to develop artificial intelligence. Musk later left the company while Altman remained. Over the years, OpenAI slowly moved toward a for-profit status with the launch of services like ChatGPT.

ChatGPT is OpenAI’s flagship product with free access—with certain limits. Users can opt to pay $20 a month to access more features or $200 a month if they want the most advanced capabilities available.

Musk has expressed his dissatisfaction with the direction that OpenAI has been heading down. He has clashed several times on social media with Altman. This eventually resulted in Musk creating a brand-new AI company, xAI, which later developed the Grok chatbot.

Recently, Elon Musk announced that he will be bidding for OpenAI. However, based on the latest update, it seems that his bid might not have been serious. It might have been Musk’s attempt to get Altman’s attention and hopefully change his mind. At this point, it seems evident that OpenAI won’t reverse its course, so it remains to be seen how this will play out.

It is possible that Musk could be attempting a hostile takeover. With such a huge bid on the table, it would be hard for OpenAI’s board of directors to ignore.