Musk's attorney, Marc Toberoff, confirmed he submitted the bid for "all assets" of the tech company to its board on Monday.

The offer is the latest twist in a longstanding battle between Musk, the world's richest man and right hand to US President Donald Trump, and Open AI chief executive Sam Altman over the future of the start-up at the centre of the AI boom.

In response to the bid, Altman posted on Musk's social media platform X: "no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want".

His rejection of the bid does not necessarily mean the proposed take over is dead.

OpenAI's board will have a say on the company's future and may favour a sale, especially if the offer is increased.

However, there are also questions about how serious Musk is about actually acquiring the firm, and whether the offer is really part of the ongoing legal row between the two men.

Musk and Altman co-founded the start-up in 2015 as a non-profit company, but the relationship has soured since the Tesla and X boss departed the firm in 2018.

Altman is said to be restructuring the company to become a for-profit entity, stripping it of its non-profit board - a move Musk argues means the company has abandoned its founding mission of developing AI for the benefit of humanity.

But OpenAI argues its transition into a for-profit firm is required to secure the money needed for developing the best artificial intelligence models.

Christie Pitts, a tech investor in new businesses at Panasonic Well in San Francisco, told the BBC she was sceptical about Musk's motives.

"I think it's fair to be pretty suspicious of this considering that he has a competitor himself... which is structured as a for-profit company, so I think there's more than meets the eye here," she told the BBC.

The offer tabled at $97.4bn is much lower than the $157bn the company was valued at in its latest funding round in October last year. Talks over a further funding round reportedly value it now at $300bn.

AzVision.az

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