After what feels like an eternity of beefing with OpenAI, Elon Musk now wants the tech giant back under his control, and he’s willing to spend $97.4 billion to get it. Today, Elon’s legal team, led by attorney Marc Toberoff, submitted the official bid to OpenAI’s board, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Elon, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but left the organization three years later, says he’s returning to “restore” the company’s original mission of open-source AI and public safety. “It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was,” Elon said through Toberoff. “We will make sure that happens.” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was quick to respond, publicly via Elon’s own X account, saying, “No thank you but we will buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.”
As you might know, OpenAI moved its structure from a nonprofit to a capped-profit model in 2019, triggering criticism from Elon and others who believe its mission became too commercially driven. OpenAI has a valuation target of $300 billion and a projected $11.6 billion in revenue this year.
But while Elon plots a takeover, Sam is pushing a different vision for the company’s future. In a recent blog post, Altman proposed a “compute budget,” an ambitious plan to ensure global access to AI. Sam said the idea is to allow “everyone on Earth to use a lot of AI,” while preventing the technology from being hoarded by a few powerful companies or nations.
But he also warned that AI could worsen inequality if left unchecked. “The balance of power between capital and labor could easily get messed up,” he wrote.
Who are the investors?
The investor group backing Elon’s $97 billion bid is packed with familiar names. These are people and firms already tied to Elon’s empire. They are Baron Capital Group, Valor Management, Atreides Management, Vy Fund III, Emanuel Capital Management, and Eight Partners VC.
Baron Capital Group, founded by Ron Baron, owns Baron Partners Fund, which Ron runs alongside his son Michael. This subsidiary holds major stakes in both Tesla and SpaceX. Atreides Management, led by former Fidelity exec Gavin Baker, got its start investing in SpaceX and later backed Tesla. Baker even cheered on Elon’s huge Tesla compensation package.
Valor Management’s founder, Antonio Gracias, was an early investor in SpaceX and sat on Tesla’s board. He also had a piece of SolarCity before Tesla bought it. Vy Capital, created by Alexander Tamas, threw money into SpaceX and other Elon ventures, like The Boring Company and Neuralink.
Then there’s Eight Partners VC—better known as Joe Lonsdale’s 8VC, who is an Elon superfan. He’s publicly praised Elon’s approach to government efficiency and even had his CNBC interview reposted by Elon on X (formerly Twitter).
Emanuel Capital, on the other hand, keeps a lower profile, but the rest of the group? They’re fully connected to Elon’s web. Still, no one knows how serious this takeover bid is. Some online speculation suggests it could be Elon trolling—or a ploy to drive up the price Sam’s team would need to pay to fully take control of OpenAI’s assets and ditch its nonprofit roots.
OpenAI aims for mainstream AI adoption
Elon’s takeover bid comes just as OpenAI takes its marketing to new heights. The company spent $14 million for a 60-second Super Bowl ad that aired during the first half of the game last weekend. The ad, developed under Chief Marketing Officer Kate Rouch, was basically a mission to introduce OpenAI’s technology to the general public by showing how AI is part of humanity’s technological evolution.
The commercial used pointillism-inspired animation, transitioning from ancient innovations like fire and the wheel to modern breakthroughs like space exploration and DNA sequencing. It ended with practical examples of AI tools, including ChatGPT, being used for tasks like language tutoring and business planning.
“We want the message to feel relevant to the audience that is watching the Super Bowl, which includes tens of millions of people who have no familiarity with AI,” Rouch said.
Despite OpenAI’s heavy use of its own AI systems in research and product development, the Super Bowl ad relied entirely on human artists for the final animation. OpenAI’s text-to-video tool, Sora, was used only in the early brainstorming stages to test ideas.
Rouch described the ad as “a celebration of human creativity,” distancing the final product from AI-generated visuals to appeal to mainstream viewers.
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