Elon Musk shared a video of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testifying before the US Senate in May 2023. In the video, Altman stated that he was driven solely by goodwill and did not own any shares in OpenAI. Along with the video, Musk made a critical comment, calling Altman a “Scam Altman.” After the video went viral, Altman decided he didn’t want to be in charge of OpenAI’s charity division and dropped his takeover attempt.
According to reports, a consortium of investors spearheaded by Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has offered USD 97.4 billion to purchase OpenAI’s assets. Vy Capital, Musk’s AI firm Xai, Hollywood power broker Ari Emanuel, and other investors were all part of the consortium.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, made fun of the offer on X (formerly Twitter) by saying, “No thank you but we will buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.” Sam is quoting a price to purchase Twitter, which is what makes his post intriguing. Fidelity, an asset adviser, put Musk’s $44 billion Twitter worth $9.4 billion in September 2024.
The disagreement began in 2017 during a power struggle at OpenAI. The co-founders allegedly opposed Musk’s bid for chief executive officer because they were concerned that he would gain too much power in his twin roles as a big investor and CEO. Sam Altman was subsequently appointed to the role and continues to serve as CEO, with the exception of a brief removal in 2023.
Musk’s relationship with OpenAI got even worse after the company set up a for-profit arm in 2019 to get money for the huge amounts of computing power needed to make artificial general intelligence (AGI). Although Musk denies it, OpenAI has shown internal emails demonstrating that he originally backed the concept of a for-profit structure.