An Elon Musk-led group of investors on Monday signaled its intent to take control of ChatGPT-maker Open AI. The consortium made an unsolicited offer of $97.4 billion to buy the company and possibly merge it with Musk’s startup xAI, which is backing the bid. 

Musk, an OpenAI co-founder, has frequently butted heads with CEO Sam Altman since leaving the company in 2018. Musk says OpenAI has betrayed its founding mission and now values profit over safety and the common good.

“It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was,” Musk said in a press release. “We will make sure that happens.”

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Altman mocked the bid on Musk-owned X, offering to buy the social media app for $9.7 billion.

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

— Sam Altman (@sama) February 10, 2025

Editor's note: A previous version of this article attributed to Musk's lawyer a statement made by Musk and mischaracterized his reasons for seeking to take control of OpenAI.