The purchase offer of an investor consortium led by Elon Musk of Openai’s non -profit part put upside down on Monday in the United States the worlds of technology, politics and intersection of both. Not so much for the amount offered (97.4 billion dollars; 94.5 billion euros), as for the intention of the potential buyer: torpedo the restructuring process of the company, which is a leader in the artificial intelligence sector thanks to its Chatgpt tool. The plan of his CEO and old enemy, Sam Altman, is to turn it into a commercial company.
The identity of those who is behind the offer is also key: Musk, owner of the Tesla car, the astronautic Spacex and the social network X, among other companies, is the richest man in the world. And in recent months it has also become one of the most powerful, thanks to its association, as a counselor and close ally, with the president of the United States, Donald Trump.
This has been commissioned that Jibarice the federal administration, and has given access to huge amounts of confidential information with which Musk makes succulent businesses. The idea, no matter how remote, that the South African also controls such an important actor – or at least, a part – in the AI business opens the door to a concentration of unprecedented power in US history.
Altman rejected the proposal of his former partner – Juntos founded Openai in 2015, and then Musk left the company – with a “no, thanks” and a counteroffie to buy X for the tenth of what Musk had offered by OpenAI. With more rest, he replied in an interview with Bloomberg this Tuesday at the AI summit that is being held in Paris that believes that his rival “is only trying” to stop them. “It is obviously a competitor. And I would like you to dedicate a better product. Instead, he has used other tactics, many, many demands, all kinds of crazy things and now this, ”he added.
The advisor to OpenAI referred to the times that Musk has taken him to court with a series of accusations of betraying his original spirit of the company, which was born without profit and then created a commercial subsidiary to be able . Musk considers that this play only intended to look for the benefit and, after being allying in 2019 with Microsoft, which has put 14,000 million dollars, dominate the development of AI. It was that alliance with the computer giant founded by Bill Gates that allowed the company to make its great jump and present in 2022 the Chatgpt revolution. And yes, Musk is his competitor: he undertook his own adventure in AI with (XAI), a profit company he has developed with Grok: his own version “Anti-Woke,” he said, of Chatgpt.
Altman has been designing the future of Openai for months, which goes through renegotiating the role of Microsoft, achieving additional financing worth 40,000 million dollars and compensating the counselors of the company’s foundation part, whose value places Bloomberg at 300,000 million dollars with a quarter -quarter participation in the new company. The offer of 97.4 billion dollars received on Monday gives those directors a greater negotiation power, and complicates Altman’s task, difficult to make origin, to content everyone.
In a message sent to its employees on Monday and obtained by The Wall Street Journal, Openai’s CEO tried to reassure them telling them that the structure of the firm “guarantees that no individual can take control of OpenAI.” “[Las de Musk] They are tactics to try to weaken because we are achieving great advances, ”says Altman’s text.
The question now is whether the shareholders of the non -profit part will think about the money they could earn if they accept the offer of Musk or if they will be faithful to the objectives of its foundation: to achieve the progress of AI without putting the future at risk of humanity.
That eagerness to protect the human species from an uncontrolled progress of AI is Musk’s favorite argument and his lawyers to raise his attacks on Altman in court. In one of the judgments, held last year, this contributed documents that proved that the owner of Tesla did not always guide him such high ideals. According to those papers, Musk supported the project to convert OpenAi into a profit company, and left it when he saw that it would not be possible to take control of it. The exit in the light of those messages caused the demand to withdraw.
The role of the Valley oligarchs
The enmity between both technological magnates has transcended at this time the corrillos of Silicon Valley to sneak into those of Washington, especially from the entrance of Musk, who was the greatest donor of the Trump campaign, in politics. Trump is satisfied with the courtship of some oligarchs of the Valle Promote diversity and intervene in the tone of public discourse.
On his second day at the White House, the new president hosted the signing of an agreement, baptized Stargate, between Openai (Altman), Oracle (Larry Ellison) and SoftBank (Masayoshi are), to invest up to 500,000 million dollars in four years in artificial intelligence infrastructures. Musk did not like the idea, nor the stage, and criticized it on his social network, while he doubts that they were able to gather that money.
The next battle of the war between the two came this Monday with a Musk purchase offer that nobody had asked. It is still early to know if that movement will stay to swell the list of tone outputs and distraction maneuvers of the owner of Tesla. Or if, on the contrary, it will mean the beginning of a new chapter in its history of accumulation of power in the manner of one of the supervillains of the comics he devoured as a child in South Africa. At the moment, both in Silicon Valley and Washington, the worlds of technology, politics and intersection between them observe it carefully.
