Oliver Haslam·

Elon Musk Offered Almost $100 Billion To Buy ChatGPT Maker But His Offer Has Been Declined

Following on from buying Twitter for a cool $44 billion a couple of years ago, Elon Musk is now keen to pick up another tech company.

This time, it’s OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. Musk is leading a bid to buy OpenAI’s nonprofit arm for a cool $97.4 billion.

According to a report, Musk and team’s bid was delivered to the OpenAI board on Monday morning and comes as the company’s CEO Sam Altman is working to turn the company into a for-profit structure. The move would raise $40 billion at a total $340 billion valuation. Altman also wants to launch a $500 billion AI infrastruction project.

Musk is of course no stranger to OpenAI. He co-founded the company with Altman back in 2015 before leaving the company in 2019 so it’s perhaps no surprise that he’s keen to get involved once more.

“It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was,” Musk said in a statement provided to The Wall Street Journal by his lawyer Marc Toberoff . “We will make sure that happens.”

As for Altman, he later posted to the X social network – owned by Musk – that OpenAI isn’t interested and would instead “buy Twitter for $9.74 billion” if Musk is keen to do a deal. That, of course, isn’t going to happen.