Elon Musk leads a consortium backed by xAI and investment firms including one run by Joe Lonsdale and Ari Emanuel's fund to acquire OpenAI for $97.4 billion, targeting the nonprofit parent organization and all its assets. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman rejected the bid with a sarcastic counteroffer to buy Twitter for $9.74 billion, prompting Musk to call him a swindler. The unsolicited offer escalates years of conflict between Musk, who co-founded OpenAI but left in 2019 to start xAI, and Altman over OpenAI's direction and its ongoing restructuring from nonprofit to for-profit status planned for completion by 2026. The bid comes as OpenAI participates in the Trump administration's $500 billion Stargate AI initiative while xAI remains excluded from the deal.
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