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Sam Altman is leaving no room for doubt about his views on an Elon Musk-led bid to take control of OpenAI. In a letter to OpenAI staff Monday, the CEO put the words “bid” and “deal” in scare quotes and said the startup’s board has no interest in the offer.
“Our structure exists to ensure that no individual can take control of OpenAI,” Altman wrote, according to two sources with knowledge of the letter. “Elon runs a competitive AI company, and his actions are not about OpenAI’s mission or values.”
Altman has also told employees that OpenAI’s board, which he sits on, has yet to receive an official offer from Musk and the other investors. If and when this happens, the board plans to reject the bid, according to those same sources. Internally, OpenAI employees reacted to the news with a mixture of fear and exasperation. Parts of Altman’s letter were earlier reported by The Information.
A group of investors led by Musk stunned the tech industry on Monday when they announced an unsolicited offer to buy all of OpenAI’s assets to the tune of $97.4 billion. Musk’s competing AI company, xAI, is backing the bid, as is Valor Equity Partners, a private equity firm run by one of Musk’s closest advisers, Antonio Gracias. Gracias helped advise Musk on his deal to acquire Twitter in 2022 and has been involved with his efforts at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
“It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was,” Musk said in a statement sent to WIRED through his lawyer Marc Toberoff. “We will make sure that happens.”
Musk has sued OpenAI multiple times for, among other things, allegedly violating its original commitments as a nonprofit by transitioning to become a for-profit company. In addition to fighting back in court, OpenAI published a series of emails claiming that Musk knew OpenAI would need to become for-profit in order to pursue artificial general intelligence—and in fact, tried to merge the company with Tesla.
The fight between Musk and Altman puts a spotlight on OpenAI board chair Bret Taylor, who also ran Twitter’s board of directors during Elon Musk’s acquisition of the company. That bid was, in theory, more straightforward. Since Twitter was a public corporation, the board had a clear fiduciary duty to maximize returns. Musk tried to back out of the acquisition, but his advisers ultimately convinced him that wasn’t going to be possible, and he closed on the original terms. Taylor did not respond to a request for comment from WIRED.
OpenAI’s structure is more complicated. Today, the company is a nonprofit with a for-profit subsidiary, but it’s in the process of converting the for-profit arm into a public benefit corporation, which requires OpenAI to name a price for its assets. OpenAI is currently valued at $157 billion based on its latest funding round. The company is in talks with SoftBank about leading a $40 billion investment, which would bring the company’s valuation up to $300 billion.
