Sam Altman takes aim at Elon Musk in Paris

OpenAI chief executive officer Sam Altman rebuffed Elon Musk’s $US97.4 billion ($155 billion) offer to take control of the artificial-intelligence start-up for the second time in less than a day, accusing the world’s richest man of making the bid just to gain a competitive advantage.

“I think he is probably just trying to slow us down. He obviously is a competitor,” Altman said in an interview with Bloomberg on the sidelines of the Paris AI summit. “I wish he would just compete by building a better product, but I think there’s been a lot of tactics, many, many lawsuits, all sorts of other crazy stuff, now this.”

Musk and Altman were both co-founders of OpenAI, but Musk ultimately parted ways after disagreements over the direction of the company. He is now suing the startup behind ChatGPT, claiming it has strayed from its founding mission and prioritised profit over the betterment of humanity. Musk has also established his own AI firm, xAI, that competes directly with OpenAI in developing models.

In the interview, Altman chided Musk, saying: “Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity — I feel for the guy.”

“I don’t think he’s, like, a happy person. I do feel for him.”

While Altman is publicly rebuffing Musk’s takeover attempt, OpenAI’s board will have some say in how seriously to take the bid. On Tuesday, OpenAI board director Larry Summers told Bloomberg News he has not received “any formal communication” from Musk on the bid.

The organisation’s board oversees its nonprofit arm, which in turn controls the for-profit business. But Bret Taylor, the former co-CEO of Salesforce who took over as chairman in 2023 following a dramatic falling out between Altman and OpenAI’s previous board, has a fraught history with Musk. He was chairman of Twitter when Musk made his unsolicited bid to buy the business and then tried to back out — before a court forced him to proceed.

On Monday, when news of Musk’s offer for OpenAI control first surfaced, Altman jokingly posted on X, formerly known as Twitter: “No thank you but we will buy twitter for $US9.74 billion if you want.”