Operai rejects the offer of $ 97.4 billion of Elon Musk for company control

The Board of Directors of OpenAI on Friday rejected an offer of $ 97.4 billion of Elon Musk and a consortium of investors to obtain control of the artificial intelligence company, deepening a dispute between Mr. Musk and the executive director of OpenII, Sam Altman.

In a statement, Bret Taylor, the president of the Operai Board, said: “Operai is not on sale, and the Board has unanimously rejected Mr. Musk's last attempt to interrupt his competition.” Mr. Taylor referred to Mr. Musk's own company, XAI.

Operai sent a letter on Friday to Marc Uberoff, the lawyer who represents Mr. Musk and the investors who made the offer, saying that the offer “was not the best for the Oai mission”, which is to build artificial intelligence that benefits “All humanity.”

Mr. Musk and other investors made their offer on Monday for the assets of the non -profit organization that OpenAI controls. With the offer, Mr. Musk was making a plan that Mr. Altman has made to change the corporate structure of OpenAi. Altman hopes to change the company's control to OpenAI investors, including Microsoft.

Mr. Toboff said in a statement to the New York Times: “This is not a surprise, since Altman and the president of the Board Taylor have already rejected the offer of $ 97 billion of Musk, while they affirmed that they had not yet received. But we are surprised to see the Board, which has strict fiduciary duties to carefully consider the offer of good faith in the name of the charity, use the same type of double conversation altman of double conversation used to testify to the Senate. “

Mr. Toboff insisted that Operai was putting on sale the assets of the non -profit organization. “They are simply selling it to themselves with a fraction of what Musk has offered, enriching the members of the Board,” he said, “instead of the beneficial organization in a classic self -care transaction.” He added: “Will anyone explain how that benefits” all humanity “?”

Mr. Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comments.

Mr. Musk and Mr. Altman have disagreed for years. Mr. Musk helped create Openai as a non -profit organization in 2015, together with Mr. Altman and others. In 2018, Mr. Musk left the organization after a battle for the company's control. Mr. Altman then attached OpenAi to a profit company to be able to raise the billions of dollars necessary to build ai technologies.

However, the non -profit organization retained the control of the company. Last year, Mr. Altman and his colleagues began working in a plan to change the control of the company of the non -profit organization to Openai investors.

The offer of $ 97.4 billion of Mr. Musk could complicate that plan. To separate OpenAI from the non -profit board, Mr. Altman and his allies must compensate for it. Operai could pay the non -profit organization a unique rate, for example, or give it a minority participation in the company.

But the assets of the non -profit organization have not been given a value, which was what Mr. Musk was trying to establish with his offer. His offer meant that Openai's profit arm would have to spend more to obtain the independence of the non -profit organization.

Mr. Musk also filed a lawsuit in a federal court last year to block Openai plans to restructure.

Robert Bonta, the Attorney General of California and Democrat, said this week in an interview that the State was analyzing the OpenAi plan to change to a profit structure.

“There is a way to do it well. There is a way to do it wrong, and we are monitoring to make sure they do it well, ”he said, and added that his office was also closely watching Mr. Musk.

We are “monitoring everything you do,” said Bonta.

While Mr. Musk struggles for OpenAi, he is also raising money for Xai. The new company, which makes a chatbot called Grok, is in conversations for a new financing round that could value it up to $ 75 billion, compared to approximately $ 40 billion only two months ago, two people said with knowledge of the discussions.

The conversations are in the early stages, they said, and it is not clear how much money will be collected. Bloomberg before reported The talks.

As recently as December, XAI had raised $ 6 billion, saying that it would use money to build infrastructure and accelerate research and development. Blackrock, Fidelity, Capital Sequoia and other investors participated in financing.

(The Times has sued Openai and Microsoft for the infraction of the copyright of the news content related to ai. OpenAI and Microsoft systems have denied those statements).