‘He is not a serious person’: Sam Altman takes a jab at Elon Musk, keeps doors open for China

Sam Altman

At the recent AI Summit in Paris, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman addressed several key points regarding the company's future and its mission. Altman firmly stated that OpenAI is not for sale, rejecting a recent $97.4 billion acquisition offer from a group of investors led by Elon Musk. He also offered to buy Twitter again. “The company is not for sale but we will be happy to buy Twitter,” Altman told reporters on the sidelines of the AI Summit.

Altman was asked about Musk calling him a "swindler" and "scam Altman". "He has called a lot of people, a lot of names. He is not a serious person," Altman replied.

When asked about Musk’s comments on OpenAI not being ‘open’, Altman replied, “I think OpenAI has done the most to push the benefits of AI to the world. We have open sourced a lot of things and I think we should open source somewhat more.”

Altman couldn’t resist another dig at Musk and said that Grok AI — Musk’s AI chatbot — isn’t open source either. “But that’s up to him,” he added.

The OpenAI CEO also took questions on China. When asked whether he was worried about China, Altman replied, “We would like to work with China.” Altman was also questioned on whether the US government will allow him to work with China. Altman said he wasn’t sure “but should we try as hard as we can? Yes, I think that’s really important.”

Earlier, Altman said that Musk was “just trying to slow us down. He obviously is a competitor. He also said, “I wish he would just compete by building a better product.”

Musk called him a “Swindler” and “Scam Altman” on social media. He even said during an interview with Tucker Carlson that Altman cannot be “trusted” and control of the most powerful AI product should not be with someone who cannot be trusted.