OpenAI’s board of directors has “unanimously” rejected billionaire Elon Musk’s offer to buy the nonprofit that effectively governs OpenAI, the company said on Friday.
In a statement shared via OpenAI’s press account on X, Bret Taylor, board chair, called Musk’s bid “an attempt to disrupt his competition.”
“OpenAI is not for sale, and the board has unanimously rejected Mr. Musk’s latest attempt to disrupt his competition,” Taylor said. “Any potential reorganization of OpenAI will strengthen our nonprofit and its mission to ensure [artificial general intelligence] benefits all of humanity.”
The New York Times reported that OpenAI also sent a letter to Musk’s lawyer, Marc Toberoff, saying that the bid was “not in the best interests of [OpenAI’s] mission.”
On Monday, Musk, his AI company, xAI, and a group of investors offered to buy OpenAI’s nonprofit for $97.4 billion. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and the company’s board of directors quickly — but not formally — dismissed the unsolicited proposal. In a statement, Andy Nussbaum, the counsel representing OpenAI’s board, said Musk’s bid “doesn’t set a value for [OpenAI’s] nonprofit” and that the nonprofit is “not for sale.”
Musk, an OpenAI co-founder, last year brought a lawsuit against the company and Altman that alleges that OpenAI engaged in anticompetitive behavior and fraud, among other offenses.
OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit before it transitioned to a “capped-profit” structure in 2019. The nonprofit is the sole controlling shareholder of the capped-profit OpenAI corporation, which retains formal fiduciary responsibility to the nonprofit’s charter. OpenAI is now in the process of restructuring — this time to a traditional for-profit company, specifically a public benefit corporation. But Musk, via the lawsuit, is seeking to enjoin the conversion.
In a court filing on Wednesday, lawyers for Musk said the billionaire will withdraw his bid if OpenAI’s board “preserve[s] the charity’s mission” and halts OpenAI’s conversion to a for-profit. In a filing earlier the same day, attorneys for OpenAI called Musk’s move to take control of the company “an improper bid to undermine a competitor,” and a contradiction of his position in court that a transfer of the startup’s assets through restructuring would breach its mission as a charitable trust.
Musk’s allies and Altman have traded blows over the bid this week. In a podcast interview on Thursday, Ari Emanuel, one of the backers of Musk’s offer for the OpenAI nonprofit, called Altman a “phony” who is “trying to get away with cheating the charity and its original mission.” Altman has characterized Musk’s bid as “an attempt to slow [OpenAI] down,” and quipped that Musk’s life is “from a position of insecurity.”