Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has responded to the WSJ's story on an Elon Musk buyout of OpenAI for $97.4 billion

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman rejected an unsolicited $97.4 billion buyout offer from a group of investors led by Elon Musk on Monday. The offer, a sharp discount on OpenAI’s current valuation, came as SoftBank reportedly plans to invest $40 billion in OpenAI at a $260 billion valuation, according to CNBC. Altman’s response, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, was blunt.

“No thank you, but we will buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want,” Altman posted on X, referring to Musk’s platform, formerly known as Twitter.

Musk fired back minutes later, calling Altman a "swindler." Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in 2022 and rebranded it as X.

Musk and Altman co-founded OpenAI together in 2015 as a nonprofit focused on AI research. However, Musk left the company in 2018 after disagreements about its direction. Since then, OpenAI has transitioned into a "capped-profit" model and partnered with Microsoft, which invested billions in exchange for access to its AI models and cloud services.

Currently, Altman is pushing to turn OpenAI into a for-profit business, a move Musk is legally challenging. Musk’s lawsuit claims his $45 million donation to OpenAI was contingent on the organization remaining a nonprofit. Corporate law experts told the Wall Street Journal that OpenAI must legally receive fair market value for its assets. Musk’s lawyer recently asked California’s attorney general to ensure OpenAI and Microsoft do not undervalue them.

Musk’s $97.4 billion offer could, if genuine, serve as a benchmark for the valuation of OpenAI's assets. However, legal experts argue that factors like OpenAI’s unconventional business structure, high debt, and unpredictable future growth could make it difficult to determine an accurate valuation.

Meanwhile, Musk has launched his own AI venture, xAI, which directly competes with OpenAI.

This isn’t the first time Musk and Altman have clashed publicly. Musk previously claimed that OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle lacked the $500 billion they had pledged for their ambitious Stargate Project, which aims to build massive data centers across the U.S.

Altman dismissed Musk’s claim, inviting him to tour a facility under construction in Texas. “You’ll see we’re not exactly short on cash,” Altman said.