Billionaire and White House advisor Elon Musk is leading a gigantic $97.4 billion bid to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI, the Wall Street Journal reports.Musk's lawyer, Marc Toberoff, delivered the unsolicited offer to the ChatGPT maker's board of directors today, signaling a dramatic escalation in his years-long beef with the company he co-founded alongside CEO Sam Altman in 2015.Musk rage quit the AI company after growing frustrated with its direction in 2019."Its time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was," Musk said in a statement provided by Toberoff, as quoted by the WSJ. "We will make sure that happens."The timing of the bid is especially interesting, as Altman revealed that he regrets leading OpenAI's transition ditch its open source roots in a Reddit AMA late last month."I personally think we have been on the wrong side of history here and need to figure out a different open source strategy," hewrote.Musk has repeatedly lashed out at Altman, going as far as to sue OpenAI last year for having been "transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft," citing the latter's major investment in the AI company.There's a bit of a double standard there, it's worth pointing out; Musk has raised billions of dollars for his own AI company, xAI, which is for-profit.Meanwhile, OpenAI has defended itself against Musk's lawsuit, even demonstrating that Musk had once supported turning OpenAI into a for-profit himself, but later ditched the firm since he couldn't assume full control.Musk ended up dropping the lawsuit three months later.In short, the latest bid to take back control of OpenAI could easily be seen as the richest man in the world's dissatisfaction with not being in charge of one of the key players in the ongoing AI race.The bid may have also been inspired by plain jealousy. Altman signed onto president Donald Trump's $500 billion Stargate AI infrastructure deal, which had Musk who has grown extremely close to Trump seething with rage last month as he was left out.According to the WSJ, xAI is backing Musk's bid. The Grok AI creator would presumably merge with the ChatGPT maker if the bid were to be accepted.Musk has also secured several other investors, including a number of VC funds and founders.Independent of Musk's latest bid, OpenAI is reportedly trying to raise another $40 billion which would value it at a gargantuan $340 billion."No thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want,"Altman posted on X after the story went public, in a clear dig at Musk."Swindler,"Musk replied.Share This Article