Sam Altman Stands Firm: OpenAI Not for Sale Amid Musk's $97.4 Billion Bid

Sam Altman has reiterated that OpenAI is "not for sale" following an unsolicited $97.4 billion bid to buy it from an Elon Musk-led investor group.

Altman doubled down on his stance to multiple media outlets at an AI summit in Paris, telling Sky News, "The company is not for sale, neither is the mission."

Asked whether OpenAI could afford to resist Musk's bid to buy it, he responded, "The board will decide what to do there."

Speaking to Axios at the same event, Altman said, "There's been like versions of Elon trying to, you know, somehow take control of OpenAI for a long time, so, it's like, okay, here's this week's episode."

It follows Monday's back-and-forth on X between Altman and Musk over the latter's $97.4 billion bid for control of the company behind ChatGPT.

Musk and a group of investors, including his AI company X.AI, submitted the offer to the OpenAI board on Monday. Marc Toberoff, a lawyer representing the group, confirmed the offer in a statement provided to Business Insider. The statement said the offer was for "all assets" of OpenAI, Inc.

"At x.AI, we live by the values I was promised OpenAI would follow. We've made Grok open source, and we respect the rights of content creators," Musk said in the statement. "It's time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was. We will make sure that happens."

In October OpenAI was valued at $157 billion during a funding round that raised $6.6 billion. BI reported in January that SoftBank, a Japanese investment holding company, was preparing to make an investment in OpenAI in a deal that would value the company at around $300 billion.

Source: Business Insider