Musk lawyers say he'll drop bid for OpenAI if it gives up for-profit plan
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Elon Musk will withdraw his $97.4 billion bid to purchase the assets of OpenAI if OpenAI gives up on its plan to spin out its for-profit subsidiary, Musk's lawyers said in a new court filing Wednesday.
Why it matters: Musk's bid for OpenAI was the latest surprise maneuver in a long-running legal battle that has pitted him against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
The big picture: Musk and Altman, who were both among OpenAI's cofounders in 2015, have been fighting for years over the nonprofit's future.
- Altman has guided OpenAI from its roots as a nonprofit research lab to its role today as the AI industry's leader and creator of ChatGPT.
- Altman's approach requires enormous amounts of investment, which the company has funneled from Microsoft and others into a for-profit entity. Altman and OpenAI's original nonprofit board intend to spin out that entity into a fully independent company that the nonprofit would have a stake in.
- The value of that stake is what's at issue in the Musk-Altman fight.
Between the lines: Since Musk announced his bid Monday, many observers have seen it less as a serious effort to take control of OpenAI than as a gambit to put a higher price tag on the assets that underlie the for-profit entity's value.
- The higher the price, the harder it will be for Altman to execute his plan.
- Musk — who founded OpenAI competitor xAI in 2023 — has said he wants OpenAI to refocus on its original nonprofit goals rather than evolve in the for-profit direction. Altman has argued that it can only fulfill its mission of developing advanced AI for all of humanity by raising massive funding from investors who require a return.
The bottom line: The latest filing reinforces the view that Musk is less interested in becoming OpenAI's owner than in foiling Altman's plan.
