A group of investors led by Elon Musk is trying to buy the non -profit organization which controls Openai, according to several American media. According to the Wall Street Journal and the New York Timesthe consortium led by the boss of Tesla proposed $ 97.4 billion on Monday, February 10, to the board of directors for the acquisition of the entity. This unsolicited offer arrives while Sam Altman, the boss of Openai, tries to raise funds and transform his start-up into a for-lucrative society.
This offer comes to put oil on the fire in the open conflict between Donald Trump’s right arm and Chatgpt creator, Sam Altman. “No thank you but we will buy Twitter for $ 9.74 billion if you want,” said Sam Altman on X on Monday, formerly Twitter, the social network that Elon Musk thus renamed after having bought it for 44 billion. The internal reaction was also immediate, reports the Wall Street Journal. In a Slack message addressed to employees, Sam Altman wrote: “Our structure guarantees that no individual can take control of Openai … These are tactics aimed at weakening us because we are growing enormously”.
“School”, replied on X the richest man in the world. “It is time for Optai to become the strength of the property focused on open-source and the security it was once,” he developed in the columns of Wsj. Elon Musk, who is one of the co -founders of Openai in 2015, regularly attacks Sam Altman. He has reproached him since he became CEO of having missed the initial mission of the start-up, focused on a reasoned development of AI, by creating a lucrative subsidiary capable of raising funds from companies like Microsoft.
An open financial war for the control of the AI
In December, Elon Musk opened a new judicial front against the star of Silicon Valley, by asking the American justice to prevent it from being entirely a profit company. Already at the head of substantial companies, from Tesla to SpaceX and X, Elon Musk launched in 2023 his own generative AI start-up, XAI. In mid-2014, he filed a first complaint against Openai and his two founders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, accusing them of false, conspiracy and false advertising. He then withdrew this complaint, before restarting it, then expanding it to include allegations according to which Microsoft, the main investor of Openai, and the start-up itself would have violated the law of the competition.
Now Donald Trump’s right -hand man, Elon Musk has openly criticized the “Stargate” project launched by the president. This massive investment plan in AI infrastructure in the United States, notably involving the Japanese investment giant in SoftBank technologies, and OPENAI, aims to deploy a total of $ 500 billion over four years. But according to Elon Musk, participants “do not have the money” necessary to finance it, he accused last month on X. What Sam Altman immediately denied.
Because according to an article from Wall Street Journal At the end of January, Openai was in talks to raise up to $ 40 billion as part of a round table which would valorize it at $ 340 billion. The American daily has already reported, just like the Financial Timesthat SoftBank (Japanese owner of Yahoo, Uber or Alibaba) could invest between $ 15 and 25 billion in Openai. Such a contribution could make SoftBank the main funder of the American start-up, according to the British financial daily, ahead of Microsoft, which has invested nearly $ 14 billion in the Californian start-up in recent years.