The rift between Elon Musk and Sam Altman continues to grow as the Tesla CEO, leading a consortium of investors, offered $97.4 billion to buy the non-profit that controls OpenAI on Monday (Feb 10). The company has been working to restructure itself away from its original no-profit status - but now Musk's offer could interfere with the company's plan, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. 

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Marc Toberoff, the attorney who is representing the investors, said, "If Sam Altman and the present OpenAI, Inc. Board of Directors are intent on becoming a fully for-profit corporation, it is vital that the charity be fairly compensated for what its leadership is taking away from it: control over the most transformative technology of our time." 

Also read: OpenAI to debut first Super Bowl ad, joining rivals Google and Meta in AI advertising race

'No thank you'

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As the announcement came, Altman swiftly took to the social media platform X and wrote, "No thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want."

Musk's constant allegations 

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Musk and Altman have been engaged in a rivalry for a long time. The duo co-founded the OpenAI in 2015. The X owner left the organisation before it became big in the tech market. In 2023, Musk founded xAI, a competing AI platform. 

In August 2024, Musk sued Altman claiming unethical practices within the organisation and for violating the contract provisions.

Also read: OpenAI chief Sam Altman talks AI collaboration with India, says it's ‘incredibly important market’

In November 2024, the Tesla CEO tried blocking OpenAI from becoming a for-profit organisation. Musk said that during the inception of the platform, the founders were approached for funding claiming it would be developed to use AI for humanity's benefit. But now the company is transitioning to become a profit-making organisation. 

'They don’t have the money'

On January 21, US President Donald Trump introduced a plan to invest $500 billion in creating new Artificial Intelligence (AI) data centres across the United States. Sam Altman was among the top executives who proposed it. 

Also read: OpenAI claims Chinese rival DeepSeek trained AI chatbot using ChatGPT; Microsoft investigates

Soon after the announcement of the project, Trump's ally Musk had a public outburst. The billionaire, leading the newly formed DOGE department under Trump, spent days on social media claiming that neither OpenAI nor SoftBank has sufficient funds to invest. He was also seen firing jabs at Altman, who was once an ally of the X owner. 

Replying to a post announcing the project by OpenAI on Musk-owned X, the billionaire wrote, "They don’t have the money." He further said, “SoftBank has well under $10bn secured. I have that on good authority.”

(With inputs from agencies)