Sam Altman Rejects $97 Billion OpenAI Bid and Blasts Musk’s ‘Insecurity’

OpenAI’s CEO has once again refused Elon Musk’s offer to take over his company.

Speaking to Bloomberg News Tuesday (Feb. 11), Sam Altman said Musk only made that $97.4 billion bid to garner a competitive edge.

“I think he is probably just trying to slow us down. He obviously is a competitor,” said Altman, interviewed on the sidelines of the Paris AI summit. “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.”

Altman and Musk were among OpenAI’s co-founders, with Musk eventually leaving due to disagreements over the company’s direction. He is now suing OpenAI for moving away from its nonprofit mission, while also running his own artificial intelligence (AI) firm, xAI.

Then on Monday (Feb. 10), Musk and a group of investors submitted a bid to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI.

“It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was,” Musk said in a statement provided to the Wall Street Journal by Marc Toberoff, his attorney. “We will make sure that happens.”

Altman responded in a post on X: “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want,” a reference to the Musk-owned social platform, now called X.

The OpenAI boss took another swipe at Musk in his interview with Bloomberg: “Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity — I feel for the guy.”

He added that he doesn’t think Musk is “a happy person.”

The Bloomberg report notes that while Altman is publicly rejecting Musk’s bid, the OpenAI board will have some weight in how seriously to take the offer.

The news comes one week after a judge ruled that Musk’s suit against OpenAI would proceed to trial, with the possibility of the mega-billionaire taking the stand.

“Something is going to trial in this case,” said U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, adding that Musk would “sit on the stand, present it to a jury, and a jury will decide who is right.”

OpenAI has argued the switch was necessary to help it attract the types of investments it needs to develop the best AI models. The company has also said it would work to dismiss Musk’s claims and that Musk “should be competing in the marketplace rather than the courtroom.”

For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI Newsletter.