A consortium led by Elon Musk will withdraw its $97.4 billion bid for the nonprofit behind OpenAI if the ChatGPT maker abandons plans to transition into a for-profit entity, the billionaire's lawyers said in a court filing on Wednesday.
"If OpenAI, Inc.’s Board is prepared to preserve the charity's mission and stipulate to take the ‘for sale’ sign off its assets by halting its conversion, Musk will withdraw the bid," the filing in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, said.
If not, "the charity must be compensated by what an arms-length buyer will pay for its assets." Musk's "serious offer" was to further the charity's mission, the filing added.
Musk and a group of investors made their offer earlier this week, in the latest twist to a dispute with the artificial intelligence company that he helped found a decade ago.
OpenAI is controlled by a nonprofit board bound to its original mission of safely building better-than-human AI for public benefit. Now a fast-growing business, it unveiled plans last year to formally change its corporate structure.
Musk and his own AI startup, xAI, and a consortium of investment firms want to acquire the nonprofit’s controlling stake in the for-profit OpenAI subsidiary.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quickly rejected the unsolicited bid in a post on social media and told questioners at a Paris summit on AI that the company is not for sale. The chair of OpenAI's board, Bret Taylor, echoed those remarks at an event Wednesday.
Musk and Altman helped start OpenAI in 2015 and later competed over who should lead it before Musk resigned from the board in 2018. They've been in a long-running and bitter feud over the startup.
Musk again criticized Altman's management on Thursday during a video call to the World Governments Summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, describing it as akin to a nonprofit aimed at saving the Amazon rainforest becoming a "lumber company that chops down the trees."
Altman has repeatedly countered that Musk's legal challenges to OpenAI are motivated by his role as a competitor.
Musk has asked a California federal judge to block OpenAI's for-profit conversion on allegations ranging from breach of contract to antitrust violations. The judge has expressed skepticism about some of Musk's arguments but hasn't yet issued a ruling.
