A billionaire tech battle is heating up as the chief executive of OpenAI, Sam Altman, brushes off Elon Musk’s unsolicited bid to buy his artificial intelligence company and suggests that Mr. Musk lives his whole life “from a position of insecurity” and is probably not “a happy person.”  

Mr. Altman offered his searing assessment of his fellow tech giant during a conversation with Bloomberg on Tuesday morning, responding to Mr. Musk’s $97.4 billion offer to buy OpenAI by declaring that the company is “not for sale.” Mr. Altman further dismissed the Tesla head’s bid as an effort “to slow us down” as Mr. Musk builds up his own AI company, xAI. 

“They are trying to compete with us from a technological perspective from getting the product into the market and I wish he would just compete by building a better product,” Mr. Altman said. He added that “there has been a lot of tactics” and “many, many lawsuits” but that “we’ll try to just put our head down and keep working.”

The unsolicited bid, which was unveiled on Monday, is backed by a slew of well-known venture capital firms like Valor Equity Partners, Baron Capital, and Atreides Management. Mr. Musk’s xAI is also a backer, and could merge with OpenAI should a deal be accepted. 

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

Mr. Altman quickly responded to the bid in a post on X, writing “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want,” a reference to Mr. Musk’s social media platform, which is now called X. Mr. Musk replied: “Swindler.” 

Years before the two tech personalities soured on each other, Mr. Musk and Mr. Altman co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as a non-profit research organization with the mission to “advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.”

Four years later, Mr. Musk left OpenAI after falling out with the company’s board and Mr. Altman was named chief executive. Under Mr. Altman’s leadership, OpenAI created a for-profit subsidiary to raise money from investors like Microsoft. In 2022, the company unveiled its AI chatbot, ChatGPT, which is credited with launching widespread public interest in AI. Mr. Musk launched his own AI company a year later. 

Mr. Musk’s offer comes as the Tesla head has launched a significant effort to challenge Mr. Altman’s efforts to convert OpenAI to a for-profit company. Mr. Musk first sued OpenAI in February 2024 for prioritizing profit over the company’s initial mission of benefitting humanity by becoming a “closed-source de facto subsidiary” of its investor, Microsoft. Although Mr. Musk dropped that suit in June, he refiled the complaint in August with additional allegations.

OpenAI’s leaders have brushed off Mr. Musk’s legal attacks as a reaction to the company’s success. “We believe the claims in this suit may stem from Elon’s regrets about not being involved with the company today,” Open AI’s chief strategy officer, Jason Kwon, wrote in an internal memo reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. In December, the company released documents that it claims serves as evidence that Mr. Musk previously supported turning OpenAI into a for-profit but walked away when he was denied full control of the company. 

In the meantime, Mr. Musk has buddied up to President Trump who has placed the billionaire businessman at the helm of a new agency, the Department of Government Efficiency, which is tasked with cutting unnecessary government spending. Mr. Musk’s closeness to the 47th president, however, does not appear to concern Mr. Altman. When asked by Bloomberg on Tuesday if the relationship worried him, Mr. Altman responded: “Maybe I should, but not particularly.” He added: “I try to just wake up and think about how we are going to make our technology better.” 

Mr. Altman, for his part, was selected to appear alongside Mr. Trump the day after the inauguration as the 47th president announced his plan to invest up to $500 billion in artificial intelligence infrastructure. Mr. Musk, who wasn’t involved in the announcement, took to X to bash the venture, suggesting that the companies behind the project didn’t have sufficient funds to follow through on their pledges. Mr. Altman disputed his claims as “wrong” and offered to take Mr. Musk to visit the first site that is “already under way.”