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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has refused the $97.4 billion buyout offer from tech mogul Elon Musk, claiming that the Tesla founder is "just trying to slow us down."
Knewz.com has learned that Musk has offered to take control of the artificial intelligence startup OpenAI, while his own AI firm xAI competes with Altman's company in developing models.
Altman said in a statement at the Paris AI summit that Musk only made the bid to gain a "competitive advantage."
According to Musk’s attorney, the offer made by the billionaire innovator 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."
It has been pointed out in reports that Musk and Altman were both among the 11 co-founders of OpenAI, although the SpaceX CEO subsequently "parted ways after disagreements over the direction of the company."
Speaking at the sidelines of the Paris summit, Altman said:
"I think he [Musk] is probably just trying to slow us down. He obviously is a competitor... 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."
"Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity — I feel for the guy," Altman further said in the televised interview, adding that he believes Musk is not a "happy person."
While Altman mentioned that the companmy’s board is currently weighing options for the business in the future, selling the AI startup is completely out of the question.
"OpenAI is not for sale... The OpenAI mission is not for sale," Altman said in his statement.
Altman "jokingly" responded to Musk's initial offer to buy OpenAI in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, where he wrote, "No thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want."
It is worth noting that Musk sued OpenAI in 2024, claiming that the firm has strayed from its original goal of prioritizing "safe AI over profits," according to reports.
The so-called "feud" between Musk and Altman dates back to nearly a decade when the two parted ways in 2018.
The "rivalry" showed itself once again in January when the OpenAI CEO announced the Stargate Project with the newly elected President Donald Trump and Masayoshi Son and Larry Ellison, the billionaire SoftBank and Oracle founders.
The official X account of OpenAI announced the project on Musk's social media platform, saying:
"The Stargate Project is a new company which intends to invest $500 billion over the next four years building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States. We will begin deploying $100 billion immediately."
However, Musk quickly responded by trying to undermine the announcement – and anger Trump's staff in the process – by claiming that "They don’t actually have the money."
Notably, the Stargate Project was announced merely days before the arrival of the Chinese generative AI model Deepseek—which seemingly emerged as a cheaper alternative to OpenAI's "cutting edge" counterpart.
While the innovation shown by OpenAI and other companies at the heart of the AI "craze" has led to investors feeding trillions of dollars into the industry, the Chinese AI model was reportedly built on an investment of less than $6 million.
As a result, investor confidence in the industry turned to concern over the cost-effective innovation made possible by DeepSeek, leading to a massive sell-off in tech stocks.
It was reported at the time that DeepSeek R1 overtook America’s top chatbot to become the most downloaded free application on the Apple Store in the United States.