- A recent Elon Musk–led bid for OpenAI’s nonprofit assets could cause issues for Sam Altman’s plans to turn the company into a for-profit corporation. The two OpenAI cofounders are in the middle of a legal battle for control over the leading AI company.
A recent Elon Musk–led bid for OpenAI’s nonprofit assets could complicate Sam Altman’s ambitions to turn the AI lab into a for-profit corporation.
On Monday, Musk led a group of investors in submitting a $97.4 billion for the AI company’s nonprofit assets to OpenAI’s board, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Since then, Altman has made a point of insisting the company is not for sale, rebuffing the offer privately to staff, in several media interviews, and via a public post on X.
“No thank you,” he said in an X post that appeared to reference the Musk-led bid. “But we will buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.”
In an interview with Sky News at the AI Action Summit in Paris, the OpenAI CEO reiterated that the company was “not for sale,” calling Musk a not “serious person.”
In a separate interview with CNBC, Altman theorized that the bid was an attempt to “slow down a competitor and catch up with his thing.”
Altman also addressed the bid internally, according to The Information, telling staffers via an internal message that the company’s board of directors intends to make clear it has no interest in Musk’s “supposed ‘bid’” and that the offer wasn’t in the interest of OpenAI’s mission to develop advanced AI.
In response, Musk has called Altman a “swindler” in a post on X.
Representatives for Musk and OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fortune, made outside normal working hours.
How Musk’s bid could still cause Altman problems
The move could complicate Altman’s plans to turn OpenAI into an entirely for-profit company.
The AI lab operates under an unconventional corporate structure as a nonprofit-corporate hybrid.
This involves a partnership between its original nonprofit mission and a newer capped-profit arm, with both fully controlled by the OpenAI nonprofit board.
The for-profit subsidiary was created in 2019 to raise funds from investors—including Microsoft—after Musk parted ways with OpenAI.
In recent months, Altman has announced plans to take the company further down the for-profit path and spin out the nonprofit.
Under the proposed structure, OpenAI will transform the existing for-profit arm into a public benefit corporation—a for-profit corporate entity—that will run and control OpenAI’s operations and business.
Meanwhile, the nonprofit will hire a leadership team and staff for charitable initiatives in sectors such as health care and education, OpenAI said in a December blog post.
The plans will grant the existing for-profit arm of OpenAI greater control and allow it to “raise the necessary capital” like other businesses in this space, the company said.
The original nonprofit would still own a stake in the new for-profit, something that has sparked questions about how it should be valued.
Musk’s bid for the nonprofit assets is reportedly much higher than what Altman was planning to pay.
But turning down the offer could make it difficult for OpenAI execs to justify paying the nonprofit anything less than the $97 billion on the table.
Unlike a for-profit board, OpenAI’s non-profit board has no fiduciary responsibility to take the best price.
Their only fiduciary responsibility is to OpenAI’s charter and the mission to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity, which means they can easily reject the offer if they believe being owned by Musk wouldn’t do that.
However, Musk’s bid could cause issues for OpenAI with the state of California.
If the state decides that Altman’s offer for the nonprofit assets is too low in light of Musk’s, it could block the deal on those grounds.
Musk has been battling for control of the company
Musk’s latest move is part of a wider battle for control over the future of OpenAI.
The company’s for-profit ambitions have been a particularly sore spot for Musk.
In a lawsuit filed against OpenAI, Musk accused the company of abandoning its nonprofit founding commitments and attempted to halt its conversion to a for-profit entity.
Musk, a cofounder of and early investor in OpenAI, says that he was initially approached about funding a nonprofit focused on developing AI to benefit humanity, but that it is now focused on generating profit.
OpenAI has promised to complete the subsidiary’s transition into a traditional for-profit company by late 2026 as part of a funding round in October that valued the company at $157 billion.
The company is also reportedly in talks to raise up to $40 billion in a new funding round that would value the company as high as $300 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.
