If OpenAI remains non-profit, Musk's $97.4 billion acquisition proposal will be withdrawn!

Elon Musk is trying to force OpenAI to choose between "maintaining its charitable mission" or "continuing to pursue profitability."

A court document submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Wednesday shows that if ChatGPT developer OpenAI stops its transition to a for-profit entity, Musk will withdraw his $97.4 billion acquisition proposal for OpenAI's nonprofit division.

The document states:

"If OpenAI's board is willing to continue to maintain its charitable mission and agrees to stop the transition, no longer putting its assets 'up for sale,' Musk will withdraw the acquisition proposal. Otherwise, it must sell its assets at market price."

On Monday, Musk, along with his artificial intelligence company xAI and a group of investors, submitted an acquisition proposal, accusing OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman of deviating from the original mission of developing AI technology for the public good in favor of pursuing profitability. In response, Altman refuted in an interview with CNBC, stating that Musk's actions were merely "trying to slow down a competitor."

On Tuesday, when asked how much he valued Musk's bid, Altman replied, "Not much." Altman had previously rejected the bid in a post on X.

Musk's Strong Criticism of OpenAI's Transition

OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit organization and transitioned to a "capped-profit" company structure in 2019. Musk is one of the founders of OpenAI and donated $50 million to the company for its initial research and development. However, since leaving the board in 2018, Musk has repeatedly expressed his dissatisfaction with OpenAI's shift to a profit model.

During the World Government Summit held in Dubai on Thursday, Musk criticized OpenAI's transition strategy again via video link. When UAE Minister of Artificial Intelligence Omar al Olama asked him whether companies like OpenAI could scale as nonprofit organizations, Musk responded:

"I think the evidence is quite clear that OpenAI has reached where it is today while trying to balance both profit and nonprofit roles. Now they are trying to completely abandon the nonprofit part, which is really too much."

Musk continued to explain: "I provided nearly $50 million in funding to OpenAI purely for nonprofit purposes, and it was supposed to be an open-source project. I feel like... if you find a nonprofit organization to protect the Amazon rainforest, but it ends up becoming a lumber company, cutting down trees and selling them as lumber."

Musk also sarcastically suggested that OpenAI should be renamed "Maximize Profit AI" or "Close for Greedy Profits."

Sam Altman explained last December that part of the reason for the company's decision to transition to a capped-profit structure was that Musk had stopped funding support. Supporters of OpenAI's transition to a fully for-profit public company (which could take two years) believe it will help the company scale better and attract investors