(Bloomberg) — OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman said the company is “not for sale” and Elon Musk is probably trying to delay its progress with an unsolicited bid for the artificial intelligence pioneer.
“I think he is probably just trying to slow us down. He obviously is a competitor,” Altman said in an interview with Bloomberg Television Tuesday on the sidelines of the AI summit in Paris. “I wish he would just compete by building a better product, but I think there’s been a lot of tactics, many, many lawsuits, all sorts of other crazy stuff, now this.”
There’s been long-held animosity between Musk and Altman, centered around Musk’s concern that OpenAI is moving away from its not-for-profit founding principles. Musk competes with OpenAI through xAI, his own artificial intelligence startup, and has sued the company alleging they violated their founding mission by prioritizing profit over humanity. OpenAI has disputed that characterization.
Altman also chided Musk in the interview, saying his “whole life is probably from a position of insecurity.”
While Altman is publicly resistant to Musk’s foray, OpenAI’s board will have a say in how seriously they take the bid. The organization’s board oversees its nonprofit arm, which in turn controls the for-profit business. Bret Taylor, the former co-CEO of Salesforce Inc., took over as chairman after an eruption in 2023 when the previous directors briefly fired Altman from his post. Taylor has a fraught history with Musk: He was chairman of Twitter when Musk made an unsolicited bid to buy the business and then tried to back out — before a court forced him to proceed.
Altman previously rejected the surprise $97.4 billion offer from a Musk-led group with a joke: “No thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.”
Musk’s offer was backed by xAI and had support from a range of investors including Valor Equity Partners, Baron Capital, Atreides Management, Vy Capital, Joe Lonsdale’s 8VC and media executive Ari Emanuel, through his investment fund.
Altman added that the OpenAI board is looking at a range of options for the business in the future. But selling the AI operations is not on the table.
“OpenAI is not for sale. The OpenAI mission is not for sale,” he said.
OpenAI’s board got an overhaul after the Altman ouster, with business heavyweights replacing the academics and researchers who had been wedded to its non-profit mission. Among the directors now are former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and investment banker Adebayo Ogunlesi. Summers is also a paid contributor to Bloomberg TV.
(Updates with additional details starting in third paragraph.)
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