I 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

I 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