What Elon Musk’s $100 billion offer for OpenAI is really about

While tearing down the government, Elon Musk has been planning to take over the AI company he co-founded with Sam Altman, who used to work with him but is now his competitor in the Techno-Authoritarian Game of Thrones that is the second Trump administration.

The $97 billion offer to buy OpenAI that wasn’t asked for is probably just a stunt, like a lot of the things Musk does. Yes, he would love to own the technology behind ChatGPT, and Musk says he is willing to pay a lot of money to do so. But OpenAI isn’t likely to sell; Altman shut it down on Monday with a tweet that said “no thank you.”

That looks like the end of it. If that’s the case, why go through all the trouble of getting backers, hiring lawyers, and putting out a press release?

There is definitely some dog-park behavior going on here, since Musk is just peeing on Altman’s fire hydrant. But I believe there are some other reasons at play.

A) Musk just made Altman go more slowly. Musk may have made Altman’s main goal harder to reach by making the bid public. Altman’s main goal is to free OpenAI from its non-profit jail. Instead of going into OpenAI’s ridiculously complicated ownership flowchart, let’s just say that there is a for-profit company that is currently being run by a nonprofit board. This is the part that investors are really excited about.

Investors are putting a lot of pressure on Altman to turn the whole thing into a for-profit business, which means paying the non-profit. In front of everyone, and maybe for very little money (if he doesn’t end up buying OpenAI), Musk just raised the bar for how much the charity is worth at a time when OpenAI is running out of money.

At an AI summit in Paris, Altman expressed disinterest in Elon Musk’s attempt to slow down OpenAI, stating he wished Musk would compete by creating better products.

B) Musk does want to be in charge of AI in the future. If Musk has even a small chance to get his hands on OpenAI’s top-notch technology, great employees, and strong brand, he will probably do it. In theory, he could take over OpenAI, join it with his own xAI lab, and make a huge company that would rule an increasingly crowded field.

The current government administration supports Altman’s decision to eliminate regulators from his businesses, aiming for a more “deregulatory” approach in AI discussions at a summit. Vance also made the false claim that “excessive regulation” could kill AI “just as it’s taking off.”

Of course, let’s not let Vance’s words make it hard for us to see how the industry is doing. There isn’t anything “excessive” going on with AI control because AI isn’t regulated at all. Former President Joe Biden signed an executive order that tried to reduce the risks that AI posed to national security and stop AI systems from being biased. These rules didn’t work very well, and Trump got rid of them last month. If there is one thing holding back the business, it’s its own lack of reliable technology and the inability to make products that people want.

In a tweet on Tuesday, AI expert Gary Marcus said that Vance’s “warning about a bogeyman” is a sign of how the White House (with Musk’s approval) will deal with AI: “The new government will do everything it can to safeguard companies but nothing to safeguard people.”

Which brings us back to the fight between Musk and Altman: It’s not a fight between good and evil. There’s no reason to think that Altman is better than Musk’s arrogance; he could just be a younger, friendlier version of Musk. But if you have to pick a side, it’s the side that’s hard. It’s good to compete. Coming together in a field as new as AI can lead to uncontrolled power, and Musk doesn’t need any more of that.