61 ms·
Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI
- fairity 2y ago[flagged]
- derwiki 2y agoI was thinking the same thing. I submitted the link only to find this thread.
- junon 2y agoThat's called 'deduplication'.
- JohnKemeny 2y agoI came here via the front page, and with 200 comments and over 200 points, how do you think people found this submission?
- some-guy 2y agoI didn't see it anywhere, I had to search "OpenAI" and sort by date to see any discussion. And then one of those discussions linked to this one, which didn't appear in the search.
- watoc 2y agoI had to search for it
- sunaookami 2y agoSame, with 700 comments. It's currently on #37.
- icelancer 2y agoIt's near the top now - just saw it this way. Weird though.
- mintplant 2y agoMight have tripped the flame-war detector? It goes off when there's a high comment-to-vote ratio.
- talldayo 2y agoIt's taking quite a journey on and off the frontpage: https://hnrankings.info/43004889/ https://hnrankings.info/43004889/ I'm surprised too, as this is extremely pertinent to Y-Combinator and the community at-large. Seems like something that would be stuck #1 spot for a few hours but that's up to the community to decide. Maybe we're all moving on from the OpenAI hype thing.
- I_am_tiberius 2y agoI wonder that as well. I'm pretty sure there's manual manipulation involved sometimes.
- I_am_tiberius 2y agoThinking about it, I consider it possible that pg is afraid of the Trump administration. He rightfully called David Sacks names for his actions in the Parker Conrad case. It might be subjective, but I believe that since the election, his language on his Twitter feed has changed significantly as well. I believe he wants no further conflict - the paypal mafia has too much power to harm him now.
- dadrian 2y agopg has not moderated Hacker News, nor been operationally involved in YC, for over a decade.
- I_am_tiberius 2y ago[flagged]
- tptacek 2y agoThere's always manual manipulation. In the early days of the site, the saying was "without manual manipulation, the front page would be nothing but cat pictures". Today, it's clear that it would be nothing but Musk stories.
- TomK32 2y agoNothing but cat pictures, I miss the old internet.
- fairity 2y agoI'm actually completely fine with internal manual manipulation, bc I trust the HN crew. I'm concerned that what we're observing is a result of external manipulation at the behest of self-interested parties. Here's evidence of this concern: https://hnrankings.info/43004889/ https://hnrankings.info/43004889/
- tptacek 2y agoThis has been something like 80% of all the moderator commentary on HN for the past week, it has a totally predictable explanation that is in line with a decade of HN moderation practice, and the question itself is (and always has been) off-topic. It's not "technically" against the guidelines; it's flatly against them. Take questions about moderation to email: hn@ycombinator.com.
- fairity 2y agoFor anyone who, like me, isn't aware of the "totally predictable explanation", here's more background: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978340 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978340 Tldr; The reason it dropped off the first page was likely due to mass flagging. Whether these flags were coordinated at the behest of a self-interested party is unclear. However, when cases like this are reported, more often than not, it turns out to be a function of genuine flagging.
- srid 2y agoThese kinds of controversial submissions do end up appearing in https://hckrnews.com/ https://hckrnews.com/
- tim333 2y agoI guess they are down modding the Musk stuff as they figure there's enough Musk discussion? It's currently #48 on the HN front page list. Personally I don't use that anymore and use the algoria top results for the past 24 hours which is not affected by mods, flagging and the like. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=&query=&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=last24h&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?q=&query=&sort=byPopularity&prefix&p... It's #3 on that.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- htrp 2y agoThis seems like the opening shot in a negotiation for Elon to own more of the PPU's that get converted into common from his original 2016 investment.
- naiv 2y ago[flagged]
- chollida1 2y agoThis doesn't seem to have anything to do with bluesky. What connection are you trying to draw?
- EgregiousCube 2y agoThere are a lot of bluesky users who really hate Musk and they post a lot whenever he does anything.
- stronglikedan 2y agoI don't think there are a lot of Bluesky users to begin with.
- jaggs 2y ago31,316,000 ish at last count
- verdverm 2y agoSignificantly more than Trump Social has and that "company" is "worth" billions on paper ATProtocol is going to break the hold billionaires have over social media by leveling the playing field via a common and shared social graph. Having a single account for all apps removes the inherent lockin from network effect
- naiv 2y agoYes, exactly, I thought this was clear. Thank you!
- verdverm 2y agoATProtocol is blowing up because it is a better foundation for social media than private organizations having the helm. People love real user choice and competition is possible and starting to emerge
- rvz 2y agoIt's a bit too late for that and it is not enough. The time for such a bid like this was when Sam was was ousted out of OpenAI and in complete state of chaos. Investors already put their money in at around $157B+ and are not willing to take a price cut down to less than $100BN. Unless that is the amount that Sam wants to walk away with, but its isn't even going to be no where near close to enough.
- itsoktocry 2y ago>Investors already put their money in at around $157B+ and are not willing to take a price cut down to less than $100BN. This is for a controlling stake, not outright ownership, isn't it?
- ffsm8 2y agoConsidering musks history, its also possible he doesn't actually want the deal and is doing it for other reasons. While I think the purchase of Twitter was ultimately in his favor, he definitely had buyers remorse back then.
- rvnx 2y agohttps://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/07/softbank-set-to-invest-40-billion-in-openai-at-260-billion-valuation-sources-say.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/07/softbank-set-to-invest-40-bi... By sending the message that he wants to buy at 97B, he could imply that 260B is clearly exaggerated and create fear for these investors.
- reaperman 2y agodistillate is a noun, not a verb Edit: I love the edit, it's very straightforward now!
- senordevnyc 2y agoThat's hilariously nonsensical. Hey Sam, I'll buy it for tree-fiddy, good luck getting anyone to invest at a bigger valuation now!
- gsibble 2y agoSo, from what I have read about spinning a for-profit off from a non-profit, the for-profit needs to be purchased from the non-profit at market value. There have been a lot of questions about how MSFT or OpenAI's other investors would fund the purchase of the for-profit entity. I think what this does is set a floor valuation with a fully backed bid that the non-profit would get IN CASH for essentially buying the for profit. This really messes up OpenAI's plans because it means someone else would have to bid more and be willing to part with the cash in order for OpenAI to spin off. Actually a brilliant move that gums up OpenAI's plans.
- mrcwinn 2y agoI don't know that this sets a floor, really. There's already a valuation, set by its own preferred investors. I'd think $97b is almost definitely below that. And do the nonprofit board members have the same fiduciary as a typical for-profit board?
- frabcus 2y agoThe point presumably is that the valuation in a round is paper money. Whereas Elon's group have just offered cash, so they've set the actual value. The law might only care that the non-profit gets a market cash value actually bid, not the speculative value that it could have based on multipling how much some shares were sold by the number of shares.
- gsibble 2y agoActually, OpenAI's for profit was going to buy itself from the non-profit at $40 billion. So this at over twice that is a much more attractive offer. And a valuation in a funding round is not the same as a cash offer for the full amount. Otherwise every startup would be liquid.
- gsibble 2y agoA bird in hand is worth two in the bush and a judge will see it that way if the non-profits directors balk at this based upon an investment valuation.
- irs 2y agoSam’s reply on twitter[0] no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want [0]https://x.com/sama/status/1889059531625464090 https://x.com/sama/status/1889059531625464090?
- SketchySeaBeast 2y agoBrave of him to be posting that on Xitter.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- PyWoody 2y agohttps://xcancel.com/sama/status/1889059531625464090 https://xcancel.com/sama/status/1889059531625464090, for those of us without an account.
- josefresco 2y agoFYI X has relaxed the login prompt (at least for me). You can again see the post without an account, but not the thread.
- timcobb 2y agoI like not even going there
- knowitnone 2y agono, thank you
- jaggs 2y agoNope, not interested.
- JohnFen 2y agoIt doesn't matter. I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.
- 2y ago
- mrtksn 2y agoIsn’t musk becoming a single point of failure risk?
- betaby 2y ago[flagged]
- pbw 2y agoI wrote this in 2021: Billionaires: Our Single Point of Failure https://metastable.org/billionaires/ https://metastable.org/billionaires/
- r7000 2y agoSincere question: what do you believe should happen when a company becomes successful? You make excellent criticisms and I've had similar thoughts. But I never really understood what people want to do other than confiscate companies once they become successful. Not saying that is what you want to do - you specifically say not that. You mention "let’s engineer a network of trust and monitoring and a culture of transparency". I'm not sure what that means.
- pbw 2y agoIn the post, I say private individuals can own assets in two ways, as individuals (up to a cap) or through a personal corporation (no cap). So, if you start a company that becomes huge and your slice is worth $100 billion, or even $10 trillion, you can still own all of that via the personal corporation. And you can invest or spend all of it [almost] however you want. The difference is that the personal corporation has oversight; I only specify there will be a "board" I don't have anything concrete beyond that. But the idea is in extreme circumstances, the board can over-rule your money-related decisions. The intent is they will only step in if you are going nuts, but the devil is in the details of how exactly to do that. It might be impossible, but I'd rather see us at least try rather have brain-damaged trillionaires causing unchecked mayhem. When I make this argument, people assume I want to tax or seize the billionaire's wealth, but no, I'm saying they can keep every penny. Although to be fair, if you did cleave apart people's finances like this, taxing the "personal corporation" higher than the individual portion would be tempting.
- waltercool 2y ago[flagged]
- WhyOhWhyQ 2y agoSince my goal is to see the failure of LLM technology, I think this is fantastic.
- jebarker 2y agoWhy is that your goal?
- WhyOhWhyQ 2y agoAt this point I think the burden of proof should be on ML people to explain why that shouldn't be my goal. Every person in that industry has stated that the technology is going to displace 30% of jobs within the decade. Why should anybody support something which is certain to absolutely destroy society while simultaneously having no positive payoff?
- jebarker 2y agoSo it's not really LLMs you want to see fail, it's the businesses people are building around them. I can sympathize with that for sure but to me it seems obvious that there's many potentially beneficial applications of the technology that don't involve taking jobs.
- WhyOhWhyQ 2y agoRight, though I don't see much distinction given that the cost of training the models is so high. The existence of the technology is equivalent to the existence of these businesses, is it not? Suppose the technology advances no further than it is today, and I'll even grant up to an order of magnitude improvement. I'm not interested in speculating over so-called AGI though. What would you point to as an overwhelmingly positive justification of its existence? I won't argue against it. I'm just curious.
- jebarker 2y agoAlphaFold 2. It's not an LLM but it's not that different technologically. EDIT: that last sentence is actually a bit unfair to AlphaFold 2 as I consider it to be much more impressive technology than LLMs, but it comes from a common lineage.
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoReuters link: https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/elon-musk-led-group-makes-974-billion-bid-control-openai-wsj-reports-2025-02-10/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/elon-musk-led-group-ma... (https://archive.ph/qFkQY https://archive.ph/qFkQY)
- nilespotter 2y ago[flagged]
- lysace 2y agoHe also has several investors backing him, including Valor Equity Partners, Baron Capital, Atreides Management, Vy Capital and 8VC, a venture firm led by Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale. Ari Emanuel, CEO of Hollywood company Endeavor, is also backing the offer through his investment fund.
- pinewurst 2y agoDoes Baron Capital represent the Harkonnens?
- Locutus_ 2y ago....Atreides Management? The financing arm of a aristocratic line running a personality cult and who have a nepo baby on the cards contemplating a little bit of jyhad as his ticket out? ....I Do sometimes wonder who comes up with these names.
- g_sch 2y agoThe same type of people who name their companies Palantir and Anduril
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ianburrell 2y agoMaybe they should be called the Nazgul.
- CamperBob2 2y agoAnd cross swords with IBM's legal department? No thanks.
- quickthrowman 2y ago> I Do sometimes wonder who comes up with these names. The same kind of people that idolize the character Patrick Bateman from American Psycho instead of laughing at how ridiculous and pathetic Bateman is.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mmastrac 2y agoRelevant backstory: https://openai.com/index/openai-elon-musk/ https://openai.com/index/openai-elon-musk/ Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39611484 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39611484
- averageRoyalty 2y agoWith first mover advantage disappearing for OpenAI and very good alternatives appearing, one wonders how long they can sustain a multi billion dollar per year loss[0]. The launch of ChatGPT was earth shaking, but what have they done since that impacts or excites the average consumer? Does their revenue even come from the average consumer, or primarily from API users that will lift and shift to a viable competitor? I don't know, but I'm very curious to see how they can hold their lead and be attractive in the longer term. 0. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/27/openai-sees-5-billion-loss-this-year-on-3point7-billion-in-revenue.html https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/27/openai-sees-5-billion-loss-t...
- sofixa 2y agoAccording to this analysis from a few months back: https://www.wheresyoured.at/oai-business/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/oai-business/ OpenAI are kind of fundamentally unsustainable as a business.
- senordevnyc 2y agoBefore I read this 32-minute long article, who is Edward Zitron and why should I care about his opinion or analysis?
- minimaxir 2y agoEd Zitron has written many newsletters chronicling the business economics of OpenAI/other AI companies and their incentives. They're the most comprehensive writeups in that aspect, although not as technically-oriented as most content on HN.
- sofixa 2y agoIt would have been easier to Google him, or ask Claude/Mistral to write you a summary of his article. I hadn't heard of the author before that article, but all the math and logic in it is sound. There is some guesswork on exact numbers (because OpenAI don't publish that sort of information) you can disagree with, but IMO it's fairly generous in their favour. And it still looks pretty bad for their financial prospects.
- mongol 2y agoI hope we will not see consolidation in this space but instead many competing services. I want a future where I will pay my AI money to someone else than the current set of billionaires.
- regularjack 2y agoI want a future where I don't need to pay anyone to do my computing.
- OutOfHere 2y agoOpenAI is not worth more than 9.74 billion, considering their moat is steadily shrinking and their models aren't even open. Even if OpenAI produces their chips via TSMC, it means that at least AMD can do the same, if not anyone else with just 100 million to spend.
- serjester 2y agoOpenAI is the 6th most popular website in the world and if someone's going to kill Google, it's them. If they IPO'd today, they'd easily be worth hundreds of billions if not more.
- typs 2y agoThis. Most users don't care about what model has the best benchmarks on twitter.
- rvnx 2y agoThey care about the heavy censorship of the model, the amount of refusals and the low quality of the answers with the o1/o3 series.
- typs 2y agoThey seem to be doing ok... https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%201-d&geo=US&q=chatgpt,llama&hl=en https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%201-d&geo=...
- rvnx 2y agoThis would have been true 2 years ago. Now with DeepSeek-R1, any company can host very similar service, so the technological edge has been lost. Google itself offers similar experience with Google Flash 2.0 Thinking. We haven't seen revolution with o3 (most of us, programmers, here are still with claude-sonnet-3.5 than the supposedly groundbreaking gpt-o3).
- sschueller 2y ago
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Ajedi32 2y ago> to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI What does it mean to buy a nonprofit? Who owns it now? Does anyone?
- mcshicks 2y agoExactly what I want know! A non profit is a corporation for public benefit. They bylaws state how the board gets elected, but there is no such thing as voting shares. So there is no owner. When you close a non profit you have to disperse the assets to another entity that supports the non profits mission statement.
- bjackman 2y agoYeah this is another question I had and another source of frustration with the journalists that write these pieces. Either they know more about this stuff than me and it's their job to predict that gap and explain this key detail... Or they don't know more than me so it's their job to be curious about it! The quotes and stuff just strike me as so lazy. Why are you telling me that a thing happened and then not even taking 3 sentences to scratch the surface of what that thing actually means? I guess they have to pump stories like this out in just a few minutes...
- throwup238 2y agoNonprofits generally have to break out unrelated business income [1] into for-profit companies that pay tax and pass the post-tax profit to the non-profit. In this case OpenAI the nonprofit owns OpenAI Global, LLC which is the entity that operates their API/ChatGPT and receives the investments from Microsoft et al. Other examples include Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation, which receives the payments from Google for default search engine placement and hires Firefox engineers, and the Smithsonian museum gift shop. It’s a very common corporate structure for nonprofits that run some kind of business because it derisks accounting and management. Musk is offering to buy the forprofit from the nonprofit, which would mean a $97.4 billion endowment for the latter to carry out their mission. It’s not necessarily a bad deal because it converts an optimistic VC valuation into hard assets, unless the rumored new round at a $300 billion valuation with Softbank is true. [1] https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/unrelated-business-income-tax https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/unrelated-business...
- bpodgursky 2y ago> Elon's offer to purchase the OpenAI nonprofit for $97.4billion isn't going to happen, but it may seriously complicate OpenAI's efforts to claim the nonprofit is fairly valued at $40billion. If you won't sell it for $97.4billion, that means you think it's worth more than that. https://x.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1889064215710941594 https://x.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1889064215710941594
- dmonitor 2y agoThat's a bad analysis. There's clearly non-market forces at play for why Sam Altman doesn't want to give control to a group associated with Elon.
- bpodgursky 2y agoKelsey Piper is a very serious tech journalist who has written extensively about the OpenAI for-profit transition and the corporate structures involved [1]. You can present an argument about why it's a "bad analysis" but your offhand "analysis" is not constructive or well-informed here. [1] https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/380117/openai-microsoft-sam-altman-nonprofit-for-profit-foundation-artificial-intelligence https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/380117/openai-microsoft-s...
- dmonitor 2y agoYou're right. I was too quick and jumped the gun by calling it "bad analysis". However, I do believe that the source of this offer is the larger factor than the dollar amount in OpenAI's valuation of the offer. If this was anyone else offering to buyout OpenAI then the argument makes sense, but Sam Altman and Elon Musk seem to hate each other's guts and are even resorting to name-calling online in the fallout of this offer. https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1889062013109703009 https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1889062013109703009 There's a good chance there's more to it than I realize, though.
- gsibble 2y agoYou can't take into account something like that when considering fiduciary duty.
- typs 2y agoNotably a steep discount from their recent raise at a 157B. The board would never approve.
- ipnon 2y agoYes, seems like a PR stunt to discount OpenAI.
- ummonk 2y agoIt's the opposite - it's a PR stunt to try to keep Sam Altman from discounting OpenAI even further and selling it to himself at a laughably low price.
- entropicdrifter 2y agoHardly Musk's first attempt at blatant market manipulation. Hell, that was how he got stuck holding the bag with Twitter
- tombert 2y agoAnd in trouble with the SEC by claiming someone he was going to take Tesla private.
- bpye 2y agoIt seems unlikely that he'll get in any trouble with the SEC this time around.
- whamlastxmas 2y agoWhat market is openai trading on?
- entropicdrifter 2y agoJust because a company is not being traded on the open market doesn't mean it doesn't exist within the context of a market economy
- manav 2y agoConsidering Musk's power and the shrinking moat of OpenAI you would think he would be create something better with government support - or as some new department.
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y agoIt certainly doesn't say much about his confidence in X.ai keeping up with OpenAI
- rkagerer 2y agohttps://archive.ph/YcoV2 https://archive.ph/YcoV2
- Trasmatta 2y agoThis would be a disaster. Elon Musk is continually pushing for singular control of everything (not least of which is the US federal government). It makes me immensely uncomfortable.
- tombert 2y agoI guess I didn't realize that when Elon said that Twitter was going to be the "Everything App" that he meant he was just going to buy and control everything.
- sirbutters 2y agoI've been uncomfortable with this shit stain since he took over twitter. And it has gotten exponentially worse ever since he endorsed the orange clown.
- tasty_freeze 2y agoThe turning point for me is when that incident occurred with the boys stuck in the flooded cave in Thailand. Musk had his designers create a mini-submarine to rescue them... but it wasn't suitable. One of the cave divers who risked his life to rescue the boys made the mistake of saying Musk's sub was useless... so Musk called the diver "a pedo." I have no idea how he got away with it, but Musk claimed that when he said "pedo" he didn't mean to suggest the diver was a pedophile. It was just a South African general insult without any connotation of pedophilia, he claimed. Since then, whenever I can, I describe Musk as a well-known pedo. Sue me.
- Timon3 2y agoDon't forget that Musk also hired a PI to gather evidence that the cave diver was a pedophile (which obviously failed).
- alpha_squared 2y agoIt feels like Musk is single-handedly making a great case for why unlimited accumulation of wealth is a bad idea. It's pretty colorful language, but my mind immediately jumps to "financial terrorist". He's using his enormous amount of wealth and influence as a weapon to bludgeon anyone and anything in his way.
- tryptophan 2y agoI typically like Elon about 70% of the time, but I need to agree here. I don't quite understand how he suddenly got so much influence.
- orwin 2y agoHe always had it? Money give influence naturally. I've listened to a history podcast about the robber barons and how following the backlash and dismantlement of the Standard oil, industrialist started buying articles, sometime even newspapers to sell their stories, and in the US, it worked wonderfully. You still have the brand "Quaker" that was born at the time, and probably a dozen other, where they manipulated their own famillial history to build an image, and hide the fact that children died in their mine or that they just had 20 redneck strikers killed. It's not as bad today, but building a personal brand by buying puff articles, fondations. Buying goodwill and influence was always present since at least that time (Honestly, Berkshire Hathaway made at least some of its money on WB reputation, so tech billionaires are not the only kind of CEO who do it)
- sangnoir 2y ago> He always had it? Money give influence naturally. Not as much as he has now: he was famously frustrated by the California state government's Covid lockdown mandates, and was pretty powerless against them. That frustration is probably what led him to buy influence in the Trump campaign,and later administration. Money can take you so far, political power will take you further for imposing your will on others. The "Shock-and-awe"/blitzkrieg strategy is another force-multiplier. By moving much faster than the bureaucracy and legal system can respond, the question on whether he has the power or authority to do the things he's doing may become moot.
- kennethologist 2y agoWSJ Full Article: https://archive.is/Uygax https://archive.is/Uygax
- bjackman 2y agoThis includes the actually interesting bit: > One of the thorniest questions in the conversion has been how the nonprofit will be valued. Musk’s bid sets a high bar and may mean that he, or whoever runs the nonprofit, would end up with a large and possibly controlling stake in the new OpenAI. So this is a play to mess with the restructuring? Why aren't the news stories exploring this angle? It's very annoying that this comes below the regurgitated press releases and asinine Twitter quotes. Reuters didn't even mention it. The Guardian just barely touches on it.
- Redoubts 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect
- bjackman 2y agoThis isn't that, I'm not at all knowledgeable about this topic, it's just the basic level of curiosity you'd expect from an educated layman! 2 brain cells: "one hundy billy is a lotta dollars" 3rd brain cell: "Elon obviously doesn't actually expect this sale to happen, something more interesting is going on here, what is it?" Journalist: "iunno just paste the quote and hit publish"
- chrisco255 2y agoIntelligent and honest journalists are as rare as unicorns.
- WiSaGaN 2y agoI think this is a negotiation tactic that aims to eventually block OpenAI's transition to for-profit.
- gsibble 2y agoI wholeheartedly agree
- seydor 2y agonon-non-profit
- WiSaGaN 2y agoFixed! Thanks!
- I_am_tiberius 2y agoIt's also another great view into Musk's character.
- chrisco255 2y agoThe whole OpenAI debacle is a cluster. Clearly OpenAI should have been founded as a for-profit corp from the beginning. If it had, then folks like Musk that put up $100M to help found it wouldn't have been shuttered out of whatever deal is going on to transform it into a for-profit.
- freitasm 2y agoUnless it ends up like the Twitter situation and he is forced to put the money up.
- graeme 2y agoAnd at least at the stated valuation. They've valued it at $40 billion but if they decline larger offers it is hard to sustain the low valuation.
- pavelstoev 2y ago
- gsibble 2y agoHow in the hell is this not on the front page? Once again, any bad news for OpenAI is censored from reaching the front page of HN.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cratermoon 2y agoWhere's he getting that $94.7B, from the US Treasury?
- barkingcat 2y agothe same fund that's going to buy tiktok
- cratermoon 2y agoYour tax dollar at work!
- nightmare_eyes 2y ago[dead]
- hindsightbias 2y agoCouldn't the prior actions and TikTok be taken as precedents for a National Security takeover? Put it under DOGE?
- TheAlchemist 2y ago"The bid is being backed by Musk's AI company xAI, which could merge with OpenAI following a deal, according to the Wall Street Journal which first reported Musk's offer earlier on Monday." xAI is not making any money - it's a money furnace, so what does it mean the bid is backed by xAI ? The leverage and 'creativity' in the US is off the charts. Dotcom bubble starts to look reasonable.
- bilbo0s 2y agoThis is an underrated comment. And the key point in this news that punctuates the ridiculous farce that is the nature of this offer.
- rozap 2y agoIf they merge two money furnaces, then they can make up for the losses with the higher volume :)
- notatoad 2y agoas i underestand it, xAI is essentially Elon's personal piggybank, and how he funnels money from his other companies back to himself. Tesla is public and Twitter is co-owned by a whole bunch of other billionaires, but xAI is just Elon.
- 2y ago
- sylware 2y agommmmh... chat-gpt 5 and their other models are so much a disappointment they want to sell fast? That bleeding money went to nvidia(US) and the US electric grid, so its FINE from a US point of view (I don't think a lot went to TSMC(taiwan)). Unless openai is transfering significant amount of money outside the US (directly or via some montage).
- sidibe 2y agoGood it was reprehensible that tech attention or gullible government/bank money would be going to something that isn't owned by Elon. Only he can save us
- disqard 2y agoYou forgot to capitalize the "h" in "he" in your last sentence.
- ggm 2y agoTake the money. It's not Open, and its not A(G)I. You won't get a better deal. Great come-back, but at this point, I'd take the money. The field now has nation-state actors, it will almost impossible to sustain a revenue flow for this: price is going down. (not an investor) BTW the board valuation isn't against sunk cost, its against hyped future value. This may be half the hype but its a shitload more than spend.
- bamboozled 2y agoKetamine is a hullava thing.
- Layvier 2y ago> "It's time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was," Musk said in the press release. "We will make sure that happens."" From the creator of Grok, this is such an insane thing to say
- hn_throwaway_99 2y agoNone of these people have any shame anymore, it's just exponentially growing levels of unwarranted chutzpah.
- darknavi 2y agoAnd Tesla, who (in)famously doesn't regularly publish their GPL-derived codebases.
- chairhairair 2y agoWhat’s the background here? How can we know they use GPL licensed code? Was there some leak?
- cyberax 2y agoTheir infotaiment uses a customized Debian distro. On a Model S you could easily get a shell into it, because they used a freaking SSH with a password-based authentication over Ethernet to connect from the instrument cluster to the computer in the central console. You could sniff the password with a man-in-the-middle attack, if you knew the host key of the instrument cluster. Here's one from my previous Model S: https://gist.github.com/Cyberax/ad9866ab4306d43957dc480db573f26d https://gist.github.com/Cyberax/ad9866ab4306d43957dc480db573...
- chrisco255 2y agoThis is a gist created 1 hour ago. No proof of the attack vector. What's the point of posting a private key? Also, so what if they used Debian? Linux is used on everything. Debian has multiple licenses, it also has BSD3 and others to choose from: https://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/ https://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/
- rendang 2y ago> consortium led by Elon Musk Are there other major investors involved here or just Musk?
- ZiiS 2y agoJoe Lonsdale, who co-founded Palantir
- lotsofpulp 2y agoFrom WSJ: > The bid is being backed by Musk’s own artificial intelligence company xAI, which could merge with OpenAI following a deal. He also has several investors backing him, including Valor Equity Partners, Baron Capital, Atreides Management, Vy Capital and 8VC, a venture firm led by Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale. Ari Emanuel, CEO of Hollywood company Endeavor, is also backing the offer through his investment fund.
- tenpies 2y agoGiven that it's being done through xAI, it seems reasonable to think that most parties from December's series C would also at least entertain the idea: > A16Z, Blackrock, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Kingdom Holdings, Lightspeed, MGX, Morgan Stanley, OIA, QIA, Sequoia Capital, Valor Equity Partners and Vy Capital, amongst others. Strategic investors NVIDIA and AMD also participated and continue to support xAI in rapidly scaling our infrastructure. From: https://x.ai/blog/series-c https://x.ai/blog/series-c
- sporkland 2y agoGotta settle ownership in the octagon.
- xtracto 2y agoIt's time for a Celebrity DeathMatch: Musk vs Altman. With Zuckerberg as an extra if possible. Aaaah I miss that show.
- whatever1 2y agoI see clear sentiment change in HN. And that is why I love this forum. People here do change their opinions when presented with facts :) Proud to be a member of the community.
- chrsig 2y agoI mean...you're kinda using sentimental anecdata to pat hn on the back a little bit here. There are definitely other explanations for sentiment change than being presented with facts.
- whatever1 2y agoThere could be 2 other reasons: 1) Vocal people dynamics changed. It could be the case but other communities (eg reddit) do not show such behavior. The sentiment there is the same as before just louder, no shift. 2) Moderators are silencing one side of the audience. I do not have the evidence to prove such behavior.
- _2d30 2y agoA lot of people are unsurprisingly throwing shade on Musk being involved here but I think it's really important to understand what this is fundamentally about: stopping or fundamentally changing OpenAI's plans to be spun off. The issue at hand is that OpenAI (the private, currently "capped profit" entity, henceforth in this post referred to as OpenAI-P) is trying to get spun out of control of the OpenAI non-profit (henceforth referred to as OpenAI-NP). In order to do this, OpenAI-P must compensate OpenAI-NP for its ownership of OpenAI-P. Currently they are trying to value this at $40B. This is a swindling for numerous reasons. Firstly, OpenAI-NP has complete control over OpenAI-P. They OpenAI-NP board can do whatever it wants with OpenAI-P. OpenAI-P has some financial obligations to those who have purchased its PPU (its equity instrument) but ultimately OpenAI-NP controls OpenAI-P and could do whatever it wants with it (eg shut it down, fire Sam Altman on a whim, etc). Further, the cashflows that OpenAI-NP still has ownership of are, at least under the claims of people like Sam A, clearly worth dramatically more than the $40B valuation would imply. In addition, the OpenAI-NP mission is "Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence—AI systems that are generally smarter than humans—benefits all of humanity". The control of the leading AI Lab is the only way that they can possibly live up to their mission. To abdicate control of OpenAI-P is to abdicate their mission. If the OpenAI-NP board follows their mission as they are obligated to, they cannot possibly be willing to abdicate this control and they must surely value it far beyond $40B. EDIT TO ADD TL;DR - Musk is trying to force OpenAI to value OpenAI-NP's stake in OpenAI-P at a reasonable level which is far greater than the current $40B which will help Musk by potentially derailing OpenAI-P's goal to be spun off.
- Slow_Hand 2y agoCould it be that part of the the Musk-led group's offer of $100 billion is a tactic to drive up the valuation of Open AI-P, so that it's more painful/difficult for Open AI-P to buy itself out of Open AI-NP?
- _2d30 2y agoThat's why I said this: > this is fundamentally about: stopping or fundamentally changing OpenAI's plans to be spun off. If OpenAI actually values OpenAI-NP at $40B then they will surely sell it for $97B. The point is the $40B is obviously a dramatic undervaluing and the fact they won't sell it for $97B shows that. This is the wrench.
- esskay 2y agoWell...at least we know what those scammy as fuck crypto scemes for Donald and Melania were for.
- OhNoNotAgain_99 2y ago[dead]
- pcj-github 2y agoThe one thing Musk does not have in his drive for total world domination is AI. Don't let him get it. Profoundly dangerous. Watch as he attempts to use the levers of the now illegitimate US government to force the outcome.
- FFRefresh 2y agoHe already owns xAI, valued at $45B+.
- disqard 2y agoCorrect, though my perception is that it's a distant Nth-place player behind ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, etc.
- chrisco255 2y agoGrok 2 is already better than Claude 3.5, at least for programming tasks, in my experience.
- EricDeb 2y agoWhy would musk want another AI company or is this just to get back at Altman?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- wyre 2y agoMy instinct says he wants OpenAI so he can turn ChatGPT into another propaganda machine like he did with Twitter.
- whamlastxmas 2y agoIt’s pretty wild to try to claim twitter wasn’t a propaganda machine before musk
- gdiamos 2y agoGreat idea
- idunnoman1222 2y agoitt technocrats complaining about how bad elon is with tone a reasoning no better than his
- neilv 2y agoRecalling that almost all the OpenAI employees signed to support the reinstatement of Altman... it'd be funny if all someone else had to do to seize control of OpenAI was to offer the employees more money.
- kweingar 2y agoRegardless of how you feel about the potential consequences of Musk being a significant shareholder of OpenAI, the alternative is not to let sama and other preferred investors buy the non-profit's stake at a >50% discount as they had planned to do before this offer.
- digitaltrees 2y agoI think this was the final item for “Elon Bond villain” bingo
- openrisk 2y agoWell, now that Wall Street offloaded the X debt they were stuck with for some time they can support great new ventures. It does all have a bit of Wile E Coyote feel to it. Keep gesticulating wildy to propel forwards before inevitably plunging in the abyss below. https://www.wsj.com/finance/banks-sell-5-5-billion-of-x-loans-after-investor-interest-surges-4b84f89c https://www.wsj.com/finance/banks-sell-5-5-billion-of-x-loan...
- sub7 2y agoMusk is a Xi surrogate
- cbar_tx 2y agoThe comments here are disturbingly similar to reddit. Is HN broken or what?
- ilikehurdles 2y agoHN has been reduced to reddit over the previous few years, sorry to say. Yes, it is broken. Some cool hobbyist projects get some attention here and there but a cultural tumor has metastasized among its audience.
- ulfw 2y agoSick and tired of idiotic daily Musk Musk Musk news. You can't live life anymore without that nazi doing some random thing. Btw he is out now insulting Altman. Childish and horrible.
- sidcool 2y agoNo. I don't like this. Too much power concentrated in the hands of a single individual. I admire Musk, but I firmly believe never put anyone on a pedestal. I hope this does not happen.
- dhdjruf 2y ago[flagged]
- miramba 2y agoRather than discussing crazy Elon, I would like to hear insights on what this means? Why does he want OpenAI? Is there a chance to ever get this money back? Who is financing this after the twitter failure?
- guax 2y agoThe last question to me is the most interesting. I am starting to believe that they don't consider it a failure because they might be lending the money as a bribe to be close/hold something to the guy influencing the president. Like Trump getting money from DB over and over.
- skc 2y agoIs he finding it hard to get anyone to care about grok?
- yowayb 2y agoHow would X benefit from such an acquisition?
- throwccp 2y ago[dead]
- eaglelamp 2y agoChatGPT gov launched in January. Musk is using DOGE to hoover up tons of government data and reportedly using 'AI' technology to analyze it. There seems to be a rush to insert 'AI' into government processes, and with the government, unlike the consumer market, being the first to market will build a significant moat. Of course this will lead to conflict between Altman and Musk as they rush to entrench themselves within the current administration. This buyout offer could be an effective tactic to delay the pending funding from Softbank, and in turn the kick off of stargate, while DOGE gets up to speed. Even a short delay could be impactful in the early days of an aggressive and fickle administration.
- LeicaLatte 2y agoMore pot stirrer than ai overlord kind of move by Musk here.
- mppm 2y agoI think a relevant bit of context for this move are the restructuring negotiations with Microsoft. Matt Levine has some excellent commentary on this [1][2], as usual. In short, due to their unusual "capped-profit" investment, Microsoft has first dibs on a very large chunk of hypothetical future profit. While the details are not public, a "low" valuation of 100B would imply that Microsoft is entitled to a controlling stake in the restructured for-profit, while a 1T valuation would proportionally imply a much smaller slice of the pie. Presumably, Musk is trying to throw a wrench into these negotiations, by putting a valuation on the low end on the table, while Altman's "counteroffer" to buy Twitter for 9.74B sort of claims that this is too low by a factor of 5 to 10-ish. 1. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-10-21/who-owns-openai https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-10-21/who-ow... 2. https://archive.is/nHG3P https://archive.is/nHG3P
- roody15 2y agoThis is an odd thread. If a group is able to take control and prevent OpenAI from becoming a for profit corporation would be a welcome development.
- hengistbury 2y agoI suspect many people in this thread don't believe this is genuinely about preventing OpenAI from becoming a for-profit corporation.
- d3vmax 2y agoMusk is salty he left the alliance at the start and now wants back in.
- yakito 2y agoReminder: don’t trust third parties with your digital belongings. Not because they’re evil, but because they’re third parties. And third parties, by definition, are people who today are on your side and tomorrow will sell you to the highest bidder. It happens in life, and it happens on the internet. Today, your digital life, files, photos, chats, etc, are on a server run by a company with a cute logo and a manifesto about privacy. Tomorrow, that company gets bought by a billionaire with lizard-like features, changes its terms and conditions, and your stuff ends up on a marketplace for five cents a bundle.
- more_corn 2y agoWho is still give that guy money after the failure of Twitter and the impending collapse of Tesla stock?
- zzleeper 2y agoThe Saudis, Softbank, Thiel, or maybe some banks or private capital lenders trying to ingratiate with Musk et al?
- ornornor 2y agoIm expecting the third world war to start anytime now and it will be us against Musk and Trump’s terminators autonomous killing robots. Im half joking when I say that.
- theatomheart 2y agoTrump put Elon on stage at rallies over and over, letting all of America know if you vote for Trump, he will hire Elon to run DOGE. They were as open about this as a campaign can possibly be. Then, America overwhelmingly voted to have exactly that. Period. End of story. Cry about it any way you want but this is what the people voted for, this is what the people want. Get over yourself. No one cares about your opinion but you. The people have spoken. Deal with it.
- zkmon 2y agoYo dogg, I hear you like capitalism. And here is your Musk.
- k310 2y agoWhy shouldn't he buy everything? He bought the U.S. (sarcasm, I hope) OTOH, everything Trump threatens is an invitation to bribery. And when it starts to go south for him, Elon's going under the bus, not to re-engineer them. Trump's dream is to be the richest man in the world. Someone is in the way as soon as his hatchet man job is done. Nothing has any meaning to Trump but money.
- merillecuz56 2y ago[dead]