On February 10, 2025, an Elon Musk-led consortium reportedly made an unsolicited $97.4 billion offer aimed at the nonprofit that controls OpenAI. Sam Altman answered on X with a joke: “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.” The offer was reported; no completed acquisition followed from the exchange.
What Musk’s group reportedly offered
Musk’s attorney Marc Toberoff reportedly submitted the offer to OpenAI’s board on February 10, 2025. The reported value was $97.4 billion, and Musk’s side said it wanted to return OpenAI to an open-source, safety-focused mission. These details were reported at the time by 9to5Mac.
“Buy OpenAI” is shorthand for the proposal. The reported target was the nonprofit entity that controls OpenAI, not necessarily every operating asset in a conventional purchase of the whole company. A bid submitted to a board is not an accepted transaction, and the reported valuation is not evidence of a completed appraisal or payment.
Why Altman mentioned Twitter
Altman posted on X: “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.” The $9.74 billion figure is exactly one-tenth of Musk’s reported $97.4 billion offer. It was a taunt, not a reported plan by OpenAI to acquire X, the platform Musk renamed from Twitter.
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Altman’s post was a public dismissal of the proposal, not, on the available reporting, proof of a formal board resolution. It should not be treated as a legally final rejection made unilaterally on behalf of OpenAI’s governing body. Musk replied with insults including “Swindler” and “Scam Altman”; the social-media exchange did not itself change the offer’s legal status. Contemporaneous coverage collected by Techmeme documented the exchange.
The history behind the dispute
Musk helped fund and co-founded OpenAI, later left the organization, and has since criticized its direction. He has argued that OpenAI departed from its original nonprofit and open-source mission. That is Musk’s account of the dispute, not a settled finding. He later founded xAI, which competes in the AI market, and has pursued litigation against OpenAI and Altman.
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Reporting identified xAI and several investment interests as participants or backers in the consortium: Baron Capital, Valor, Atreides, Vy Capital, Joe Lonsdale’s 8VC, and an investment vehicle associated with Ari Emanuel. The names were reported, not independently verified here as binding commitments to fund a purchase. Techmeme’s contemporaneous entry lists the reported participants.
Why the nonprofit structure mattered
OpenAI was pursuing a restructuring that would give its for-profit business a different corporate position from the existing nonprofit-controlled arrangement. That made the nonprofit’s role and value central to the debate. A large offer for control of the nonprofit could put pressure on discussions over how that interest should be valued, while giving Musk a public way to challenge OpenAI’s direction amid the restructuring and litigation.
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Those are strategic implications, not proof of Musk’s motive or of the offer’s legal effect. The reporting supports both the possibility of a genuine bid and the view that it could serve as leverage in a broader fight; it does not establish that a deal was likely to close.
What the reported bid did—and did not—establish
- It was reported as a real, unsolicited offer submitted to OpenAI’s board, not as an acquisition that had been completed.
- The reported target was the nonprofit controlling OpenAI; describing it as a straightforward offer to purchase every OpenAI operating asset loses an important structural distinction.
- Altman publicly dismissed the offer, but the cited coverage does not establish a formal board action.
- The $9.74 billion Twitter line was a joke based on the offer’s arithmetic, not evidence of a genuine counterproposal.
- The available reporting about the February 10, 2025 event does not establish whether the offer remained active at a later date.
What to watch in the wider dispute
The consequential questions were whether OpenAI’s board would formally address the proposal, how the planned restructuring would proceed, and how the nonprofit’s interest would be valued. Court or regulatory scrutiny, investor negotiations, and any change in the consortium’s reported offer could also affect the dispute. The public exchange alone answered none of those questions.
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