Sam Altman turns down Elon Musk's acquisition proposal

In a growing rivalry in the tech world, OpenAI's founder Sam Altman has been vocal about his reasons for rejecting an unsolicited takeover proposal from Tesla CEO Elon Musk. During the AI summit in Paris, Altman attributed Musk's multi-billion dollar offer to personal "insecurity," urging him to compete by "building a better product" rather than engaging in disruptive tactics.

Altman emphasized that OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is firmly "not for sale," describing Musk's proposal as an attempt to "mess with" the AI pioneer. "Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity. I feel for the guy. I don’t think he’s a happy person," Altman commented candidly.

According to Bloomberg, Altman remarked on Musk’s actions saying, “I think he is probably just trying to slow us down. He is obviously a competitor. I wish he would just compete by building a better product, but I think there’s been a lot of tactics, many lawsuits, all sorts of other crazy stuff, now this.”

The offer from Musk, who leads the AI startup xAI, came through a consortium of investors and amounted to $97.4 billion. Their intention was to regain control of OpenAI and steer it back to its original mission as a nonprofit research laboratory. Altman swiftly dismissed the bid with a quip, offering instead to buy Twitter for $9.74 billion- a nod to Musk's acquisition of the platform, now known as X, purchased for $44 billion in 2022.

Altman further clarified during his remarks, "I have nothing to say. I mean, it's ridiculous. The company is not for sale. It's another one of his tactics to try to mess with us."

OpenAI’s board has yet to receive a formalized bid from Musk’s group. In a message to OpenAI employees, Altman reaffirmed his intention to reject any official offer to preserve the company's mission.

The rift between Musk and Altman, co-founders of OpenAI in 2015, has deepened since Musk left the board in 2018 following disagreements over the company's direction. Musk filed lawsuits against OpenAI last year, both in a California state court and later in federal court, accusing the organization of deviating from its original goal to pursue AI development for the public good.