Altman says OpenAI is ‘not for sale’ after Musk’s offer

OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman said the company is “not for sale” and Elon Musk is probably trying to delay its progress with an unsolicited bid for the artificial intelligence pioneer.

“I think he is probably just trying to slow us down. He obviously is a competitor,” Altman said in an interview with Bloomberg Television Tuesday on the sidelines of the AI summit in Paris. “I wish he would just compete by building a better product, but I think there’s been a lot of tactics, many, many lawsuits, all sorts of other crazy stuff, now this.”

There’s been long-held animosity between Musk and Altman, centered around Musk’s concern that OpenAI is moving away from its not-for-profit founding principles. Musk competes with OpenAI through xAI, his own artificial intelligence startup, and has sued the company alleging they violated their founding mission by prioritizing profit over humanity. OpenAI has disputed that characterization.

Altman also chided Musk in the interview, saying his “whole life is probably from a position of insecurity.”