Musk’s $97.4 billion OpenAI bid piles pressure on Altman

For months, the OpenAI chief executive has been working with investors to determine how to fairly compensate the nonprofit that currently controls the company as part of a plan to spin it out and make the ChatGPT developer a for-profit venture.

Musk’s how much equity , its biggest investor, should get in the for-profit company, along with other backers and employees. It is also seeking to raise already complicated. If Musk’s gambit increases the equity awarded to the nonprofit, it will be even more difficult.

OpenAI’s Sam Altman quickly rejected Musk’s offer on social media and in an internal company message.

In addition to the negotiations with investors, OpenAI must get approval for its conversion from attorneys general in California, where it is based, and Delaware, where it is incorporated. These officials govern charities and oversee the valuation of the nonprofit’s assets during a sale to ensure it is properly compensated.

Altman on Monday rebuffed Musk’s overture on X and in a message to employees. “Our structure ensures that no individual can take control of OpenAI," he wrote in the internal message. “These are tactics to try and weaken us because we are making great progress."

But the board may not be able to dismiss the offer out of hand.

“If Elon’s is a fair price and the OpenAI nonprofit is empowered to make the decision, it could sell," said Harvey Dale, a professor of nonprofit law at New York University.

The board could reject Musk’s bid for reasons beyond money, though. As a charity, OpenAI’s obligation is to fulfill its legal purpose: safely advancing artificial intelligence to benefit humanity.

“The question of the appropriate price is secondary to the question of whether the board should sell the charitable assets at all," said Jill Horwitz, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Sam Altman announced an OpenAI-led venture to build data centers in the U.S. the day after President Trump’s inauguration.

The unsolicited offer ratchets up a long-running feud between Musk and Altman. The pair were co-founders of OpenAI in 2015 and Musk left three years later. Since the successful launch of ChatGPT in 2022 led OpenAI to become more business-focused, Musk has criticized Altman for allegedly abandoning their original charitable mission, launched a competing startup called xAI, and filed multiple lawsuits against the company he helped start.

OpenAI has disputed Musk’s claims and released documents it said showed Musk previously supported turning OpenAI into a for-profit but walked away because he couldn’t get control of it.

Musk’s latest move could embroil a sizable swath of the technology industry in the battle between the partners-turned-enemies.

Japanese conglomerate SoftBank is in talks to invest up to $25 billion into OpenAI as part of its current funding round. It is also a major contributor to Stargate, an OpenAI-led venture, announced the day after President Trump was inaugurated, to build data centers in the U.S. Microsoft has invested nearly $14 billion into the startup. Many of Silicon Valley’s most prominent venture firms are invested in OpenAI, Musk’s xAI, or both.

Wall Street Journal owner News Corp has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI.

Write to Tom Dotan at tom.dotan@wsj.com and Berber Jin at berber.jin@wsj.com