Sam Altman calls out Elon Musks insecurity after hostile OpenAI bid: I dont think hes a happy guy

Sam Altman said Tuesday that Elon Musk’s “insecurity” was a factor in his decision to make a hostile $97.4 billion bid to take control of OpenAI, escalating an ugly war of words between the rival tech billionaires.Altman reiterated that OpenAI is “not for sale” after the unsolicited offer from a group led by Musk – who is currently trying to block the startup from restructuring to a for-profit entity as part of a broad federal antitrust lawsuit against the ChatGPT maker, key investor Microsoft and Altman himself.“Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity,” Altman said during an interview with Bloomberg at the high-profile Paris AI summit.“I feel for the guy.

I don’t think he’s a happy person.”Altman and Musk co-founded OpenAI as a non-profit in 2015, but fell out after having disagreements over its long-term direction.Musk has since founded xAI, which directly competes with OpenAI in the race to develop the technology.The OpenAI boss accused Musk of “probably just trying to slow us down” with his latest tactic.“He obviously is a competitor,” Altman added.

“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’s attorney Marc Toberoff unveiled the shock offer on Monday and said the world’s richest man had secured backing from an array of well-known investors, including venture firms such as Joe Lonsdale’s 8VC, Valor Equity Partners, Baron Capital, Atreides Management and Vy Capital, and Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel.In a statement, Musk said it was “time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was.”Within minutes after the offer first surfaced, Altman publicly rejected it while taking a shot at the $44 billion price that Musk paid to buy X, formerly known as Twitter.“No thank you but we will buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want,” Altman wrote on ...