Elon Musk’s Offensive to Acquire OpenAI: The Battle That Shakes the Tech World 🚀💥

An epic clash between visionary leaders and multimillionaires 💰🤖, redefining the future of artificial intelligence and the global tech landscape 🌐🔥

Elon Musk’s offensive to acquire OpenAI has shaken the technology sector and reopened the conflict with Sam Altman, CEO of the company behind the popular ChatGPT. Musk and a group of investors have made a formal offer of $97.4 billion to buy OpenAI, the nonprofit entity that controls the company. However, Altman, in his direct style on X, rejected the proposal and responded provocatively: “No, thanks, but if you want, we’ll buy Twitter for $9.74 billion.”

Altman’s trolling refers to the fact that Twitter (now X), acquired by Musk for $44 billion, could be worth much less today. Musk’s reply did not take long on X: “Scammer,” he fired from his account, which is currently known as Harry Bolz. This alias is a wordplay that sounds similar to “hairy balls”. This change reflects Musk’s provocative tone on his social network. In any case, Musk’s unsolicited offer aims to hinder Altman’s attempt to remove OpenAI’s nonprofit status and increase the price of converting it into a for-profit company.

The tension between Musk and Altman runs deep. Musk, a co-founder of OpenAI, left the company in 2018 due to strategic disagreements and has repeatedly criticized its evolution toward a commercial model. Now, with his offer, Musk intends to regain control of an organization he helped launch and which, he claims, has betrayed its founding principles.

OpenAI has established itself as the leading reference in generative AI, especially with the success of ChatGPT. The company has just introduced o3-mini, a more efficient AI model available free of charge to users. This move responds to the growing competition from open models such as China’s DeepSeek and France’s Mistral AI.

SoftBank has offered a historic investment of up to $40 billion in OpenAI, which could raise the company’s valuation to as much as $260 billion. This operation would reinforce the alliance between OpenAI and SoftBank to create a new AI ecosystem called “Crystal Intelligence,” focused on the business and industrial markets.

With this support, Altman gains a powerful ally against Musk and secures resources to expand his projects. SoftBank’s entry could also facilitate OpenAI’s transition to a for-profit model, Altman’s key objective.

While the duel between Musk and Altman monopolizes attention, Microsoft continues to strengthen its investment in AI. Despite the emergence of DeepSeek, the tech giant remains undaunted and maintains its commitment to OpenAI, in which it has invested more than $13 billion.

Microsoft is also participating in the Stargate project, the AI infrastructure initiative promoted by the Donald Trump administration, which foresees an investment of $500 billion to build data centers in the United States. It is the response to China’s rise in AI and a way to ensure North American leadership.

Europe’s Response to the Dominance of OpenAI and DeepSeek

Amid this technological war, Europe also wants to play a role as a third way. Mistral AI, the French startup that has positioned itself as an open alternative to the proprietary models of OpenAI and Anthropic, has announced its expansion with new strategic alliances. The French government has reinforced its support for Mistral AI this week with contracts with the Ministry of the Armed Forces and other public agencies. In addition, the company has signed agreements with companies such as Veolia (energy sector) and Stellantis (automotive), establishing itself as a key player in the European market.

Its CEO, Arthur Mensch, has emphasized that Mistral’s model seeks to offer accessible and efficient AI, without the dependency on massive infrastructures like those of OpenAI or DeepSeek. The company has announced the construction of its own data center in Essonne to train more powerful models with a lower ecological footprint.

The European AI summit in Paris has been marked by the rivalry between the United States and China and by France’s ambitions to defend a third way that benefits the European Union and emerging countries. Emmanuel Macron proposes to boost technological investments and international collaboration to reinforce Europe, despite concerns about inequalities, environmental impacts, and labor risks. France is betting on its star company, Mistral AI, as an example of European leadership in innovation and energy efficiency, highlighting open models and high inference speeds as competitive advantages against rivals like OpenAI and DeepSeek.

In December 2015, Elon Musk and Sam Altman founded OpenAI with the idea of creating safe and beneficial AI for humanity. Originally, the initiative was a nonprofit organization to prevent the control of AI from being concentrated in just a few companies. A decade later, that initial vision has turned into a legal and business conflict between the founders.

In 2018, Musk left OpenAI’s board of directors, alleging possible conflicts of interest with his other companies, such as Tesla. He criticized OpenAI for straying from its original goal, especially when it became a for-profit company and collaborated closely with Microsoft. Musk contends that OpenAI has betrayed the commitment to transparency and open access with which it began.

In February 2024, Musk sued OpenAI, Altman, and other executives, accusing them of prioritizing commercial interests over public benefit and claiming that OpenAI had partly achieved Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), an existential risk according to him. However, many experts disagree, arguing that AGI remains a theoretical concept.

OpenAI denied the accusations and released emails showing that Musk had supported converting OpenAI into a for-profit entity before leaving the board. They also revealed that Musk had attempted to merge OpenAI with Tesla to gain control, a proposal rejected by the founding group. This increased the tensions and public criticisms by Musk towards OpenAI, which he even dubbed “ClosedAI.”

The relationship between Musk and Altman began with a degree of mentorship, as Musk inspired Altman when he met him at SpaceX. In 2015, they founded OpenAI as an alternative to Google’s DeepMind, with the collaboration of scientist Ilya Sutskever and entrepreneur Greg Brockman. Although Musk initially committed to an investment of $1 billion, he only contributed $45 million. Over time, Musk grew impatient, proposing that OpenAI integrate with Tesla. After his departure in 2018, his relationship with Altman deteriorated.