OpenAI board rejects Musk's near $100 billion buyout bid

OpenAI's board of directors on Friday unanimously rejected Elon Musk's $97.4 billion takeover bid.

The refusal comes in the wake of OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman's earlier rejection. 

"OpenAI is not for sale, and the board has unanimously rejected Mr. Musk's latest attempt to disrupt his competition," Bret Taylor, chair of OpenAI's board, said in a statement Friday.

The company attorney William Savitt in a letter to Musk's attorney said the proposal was not in the "best interests of OAI's mission." 

Musk, an early OpenAI investor, has been against OpenAI's plans to restructure itself as a for-profit firm. 

The billionaire who has maintained that the company deviated from its original mission, launched a legal offensive against it around a year ago.

Musk's lawsuit claims a contract violation, stating Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman initially proposed a non-profit, open-source venture. However, the startup formed in 2015 now prioritises profit-making activities, it alleges.

He asserts that OpenAI's founders originally committed to developing artificial general intelligence (AGI), aiming for machines capable of human-like tasks to "benefit humanity."

On Monday, Musk and his AI startup, xAI, along with a group of investment firms announced a bid to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI. 

However, the OpenAI board, according to its letter, dismissed the bid as "not a bid at all."

According to his lawyer, Musk invested about $45 million in the startup from its founding until 2018, when he parted ways reportedly over the question of who controls the company and its fundraising potential, when it was still an unknown firm.

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