'Will buy Twitter for $9.74 billion': OpenAI CEO shoots down Musk's acquisition plan with counter-offer

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman hit back at Elon Musk with a counter-offer to buy social media platform X after a consortium led by the Tesla CEO said on Monday it has offered $97.4 billion to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI, another salvo in the billionaire's fight to block the artificial intelligence startup from transitioning to a for-profit firm.

He said in a post on Musk-owned X, "no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want".

Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X.

Altman told staff in a message that the company's board of directors intends to make clear it has no interest in Musk's "supposed bid", the Information reported on Monday.

Musk cofounded OpenAI with Altman in 2015 as a nonprofit, but left before the company took off. He founded the competing AI startup xAI in 2023.

Musk, the CEO of Tesla and owner of tech and social media company X, is a close ally of President Donald Trump. He spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help elect Trump, and leads the Department of Government Efficiency, a new arm of the White House tasked with radically shrinking the federal bureaucracy. Musk recently criticized a $500 billion OpenAI-led project announced by Trump at the White House.