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“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,” lawyers
for the billionaire said in a filing to a California court on
Wednesday.
“Otherwise, the charity must be compensated by what an
arms-length buyer will pay for its assets.”
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
videocall 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.
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