Open AI CEO Sam Altman on Tuesday slammed Elon Musk and accused him of acting from a “position of insecurity” after his offer to buy the artificial intelligence startup.
“Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity,” Altman said during an interview with Bloomberg Television on the sidelines of the Paris AI Summit.
“I feel for the guy. I don’t think he’s a happy person,” he added in comments cited by multiple US publications, including the New York Post and the Hill.
According to the New York Post, Altman reiterated that OpenAI is “not for sale” after Musk and a group of investors made an unsolicited offer. “The company is not for sale. It’s another one of his tactics to try to mess with us,” he said.
When asked what Musk wants out of the deal during the Bloomberg Television interview, OpenAI CEO said, “He’s probably just trying to slow us down.”
This comes a day after a group of investors led by Elon Musk has made a $97.4 billion bid to acquire the nonprofit entity that controls OpenAI, escalating a long-running power struggle between Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman over the future of artificial intelligence.
The offer, however, was turned down by Altman and said, “No thank you but we will buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.”
In response, Musk replied with a single word: “Swindler.”
According to the New York Post, Musk’s attorney Marc Toberoff said that Musk had secured backing from several prominent investors, including venture firms such as Joe Lonsdale’s 8VC, Valor Equity Partners, Baron Capital, Atreides Management, and Vy Capital, as well as Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel.
The bid could complicate OpenAI’s efforts to secure a $40 billion funding round led by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, which values the company at $300 billion—making it one of the world’s most valuable private firms alongside SpaceX and ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok.
