Why would Musk want to buy OpenAI for $97 billion?

Elon Musk has offered $97 billion to buy part of OpenAI. Many people, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, believe that Musk's main interest is in hurting Altman, not actually owning the company.

When Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, comes along, we never know what he's up to because of his controversial nature. But just because he's Elon Musk, his ideas can't be ignored.

The exact offer was $97.375 billion. Altman quickly rejected the offer and returned the ball to Musk with an offer for social platform X (formerly Twitter), saying, “No thanks, but we’ll buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.” Musk bought Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion.

no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want

— Sam Altman (@sama) February 10, 2025

OpenAI is currently a non-profit organization that oversees a very valuable business. The group created ChatGPT, which kicked up a lot of dust when it launched, and it has big plans. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wants to turn OpenAI into a for-profit company, but he plans to leave a certain share of OpenAI's non-profit arm.

Musk and his theoretical co-investors argue that $97 billion is a good deal to buy the nonprofit arm of OpenAI.

Was Musk serious about the offer? He could have simply wanted to silence Altman, a former ally who is now his rival. His offer could also have been a purely tactical move to force Open AI’s board to reassess how to value the nonprofit arm of the organization. In Altman’s words, “I think he’s probably just trying to slow us down.”

But there are other reasons to raise eyebrows at Musk's offer. The first is Musk's tendency to say one thing and do another. Like last March, when he wrote that he "is not donating money to any candidate for president of the United States" - and then donated more than a quarter of a billion dollars to Donald Trump's presidential campaign.

Musk has a history of making big deals that are either not real or have tried to back out of them. In 2022, when he signed a hastily negotiated deal to buy Twitter, he tried to void the deal, claiming Twitter management had deceived him.