Altman: OpenAI not for sale, especially to competitor who is not able to beat us | Hacker News Reader

Altman: OpenAI not for sale, especially to competitor who is not able to beat us

axios.com

39 pointsjmsflknr88 comments

Could this be an attempt to prevent Altman from turning OpenAI into a for-profit too cheaply? If I understand correctly, then turning a non-profit into a for-profit requires selling the non-profit's assets at a fair price. If Altman says he buys it for 40bn and there is no other offer, then who's to say that this is not a fair price. On the other hand, with a 90bn offer on the table, it will be hard to argue that the assets are only worth 40.

> Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity, i feel for the guy. I dont think he s a happy person i do feel for him.

- Altman on bloomberg

The shitposting upgraded to level 3

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2025-02-11/altman-says...

starts at around the 2:40 mark

The oligirlies are indeed feuding. I think I agree with Altman. Musk's whole demeanor is "unfunny nerd looking for approval getting embarrassed when the joke he's repeated for the third time doesn't land".

> oligirlies

What does this mean? Oligarch girls?

Casual sexism, insinuating that men don't behave this way, but women.

> Casual sexism, insinuating that men don't behave this way, but women.

Not wrong, but if you wish to communicate with someone you sometimes have to transmit in a language the receiver will understand.

And casual ageism, insinuating that children behave this way. Yet most kids I know are far more reasonable, willing to play together, willing to concede mistakes, etc..etc...

Yes, traditionally women would engage in passive aggressive slights and backhanded compliments more than men would, who would more likely engage in a physical fight. That is a pattern based on historical reality and observed and acknowledged the world over. Your attempt to make it a pathology to recognize and affirm the observation is itself a pathology, a rabid ideological one.

And I would not say it's a 'historical' thing. It's the reality we live in.

Men and women have different survival strategies. YMMV. Not everyone is the same, etc.

"The girls are fighting!" is a meme credited to Azealia Banks on the occasion of an altercation between Cardi B and Nicki Minaj. This has been portmanteau'd with "oligarch".

Yes, but the user is using it in a derogatory sense, not the friendly meme sense. Referring to someone as “girlie” can be either. I would assume this is just a way of referring to a collective they dislike or don’t respect; they’re not just ordinary oligarchs, they’re oligirlies.

Yep, it's just a fun way to refer to oligarchs :)

https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/girlies-trend-online

There's always broligarchs too.

I think of it more from the perspective that, there are likely people with far less material wealth than him who have achieved much greater heights happiness and lead a more fulfilling life.

All that wealth, power, and influence, and for what - if you can't even be happy about it?

>i feel for the guy

Altman, the sensitive, caring person, using his own caring personality to mount a mean put-down. Give me a fucking break. At least Musk isn't a sneaky weasel kind of asshole.

True. He‘s more of an in your face one.

and this is why he s still popular despite his antics

Ah yeah, he’s very popular… with the “pick me” crowd

Why would you defend either of them? Billionaire tech bros have enough shills already. It was the unwarranted adulation of these assholes that got us in this shitty situation in the first place, where they think they can do anything and stomp on whoever they want. Don’t fight for them. They would never lift a finger to defend you and would gladly sell your mother for a lollipop.

I have to admit that my initial gut reaction to Musk is also one of pity. And I don't mean that as a cynical rethorical device, if I had his (blatantly obvious) insecurities I would feel bad.

Would only be nice if his insecurity were dealt with in a way that didn't affect the rest of the world.

Musk isn't a sneaky weasel kind of asshole. Still, he is doing exactly sneaky weasel kind of shit here.

I see it more as calling Altman's bullshit, but yeah, that's not the only angle.

Haha, Musk is probably fuming as we type.

When Altman says "OpenAI is not for sale", is there any sense in which that is not a lie?

As part of the for-profit transition he is selling all of the non-profit's assets. Musk's group has offered to buy them, and Altman has declined, but he is still planning on selling them, no?

[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43004889

Isn't Musks offer just mischievous - making an offer at a lower valuation than OpenAI recently raised funds at, and I suspect substantially lower than any further attempts to raise even more capital.

Sam Altman appears to be trying to rush to use the current hype to create a large capital moat, and Musks low ball/realistic ( take your pick ) offer is trying to interfere with the raising of cash - putting doubt about the hyped valuations in investors minds.

Feels like DeepSeek already did that far more effectively. What has xAI produced?

Musk about to fire the whole team and hire more “hardcore” people.

robotaxis :)

That's waymo.

I was being facetious :)

$97bn is supposed to be a lowball offer? The technology definitely can't be reproduced by Chinese hedge funds for less?

While I think AI is over-hyped in general, in terms of revenue 10 billion in 2025 from ChatGPT alone isn't unrealistic, so it's only 10/1 ratio ( not sure what their profit margin is on that ).

The power of students prepared to pay to cheat at homework, software developers happy to cut and paste and corporates generating slides that nobody reads.

Now obviously they have competition - whether that be Google itself or Deepseek etc and it will be interesting to see how much first mover advantages persists - the product doesn't feel inherently sticky - consumer customers could easily move.

On the other hand if OpenAI manage to crack the corporate market - then that will be much sticker - and here they have a real lead - Microsoft Copilot is based on GPT-4 - and the signs are it's taking off in business - that will be hard to displace.

Definitely just feels like a way to make it more painful/expensive for them to sell off their assets and become a for-profit entity.

Current AI valuations are delusional, which sort of makes sense since so is the technology and everyone hyping it to hell and back.

Valuations are based on what you think the companies will do over a decade or two into the future. AI will almost certainly be a big deal over that time period.

Or it will crash and burn once everyone accepts its limitations, the jury is still out.

A lot of the value of ChatGPT is built on the value of the information on the internet - what ChatGPT provides is a convenient way to access that in summary form.

Look at the size of company that Google built off that same value ( via search rather than summarisation ).

Google annual revenues are in the region of 350 billion - most of that derived, in one way or another, from people wanting to access information/entertainment on the internet.

Elon Musk’s bid for OpenAI isn’t about buying it but about disrupting its transition to a for-profit company. OpenAI Inc., the nonprofit, controls OpenAI LP, the capped-profit subsidiary. To convert to a full for-profit entity, OpenAI Inc. must sell its technology and IP to the new company, with regulators determining a fair valuation.

The rumored SoftBank investment at a $260B valuation relies on this transition, but the current estimated valuation is around $150B. Typically, control premiums in such deals range from 20-30%, putting the expected nonprofit payout at $30B-$40B. However, Musk’s $97B bid for OpenAI Inc.’s assets sets a significantly higher valuation, giving regulators a strong argument that the nonprofit should receive much more.

If regulators adopt Musk’s benchmark, OpenAI Inc. would end up with a 62% majority stake, making the transition far more complex or even blocking it entirely. Even though OpenAI won’t accept Musk’s offer, the bid’s primary effect is to make the legal and financial process of going for-profit much more difficult. It’s a strategic move designed to frustrate OpenAI’s leadership, particularly Sam Altman, and potentially derail the entire transition.

I would be careful with the 4d chess angle given how the twitter deal went through.

I think this AI take is spot on.

https://archive.md/ClcaR

Whats educational here is to look into how Howard Hughes unraveled. Its not just a story about Howard Hughes, but how all the people around him who were mesmerized by him just went along for the ride.

The only difference is Howard Hughes was an introvert.

While Elon is an extrovert and in lives in the age of social media where likes/follower count amplify self delusion of the entire herd.

Elon is not extroverted, he’s abusing ketamine and it’s upended his whole personality.

The big scandal between tech chiefs back in my day was when Bill Gates and Phillipe Kahn yelled at each other at a conference.

Too bad the evil one won

"The evil one"

So, the guy who dedicates his life and money to helping people less fortunate, to pursuing goals of global health and education for women and children in third world economies.

Have you noticed the behavior of other tech billionaires being discussed in this post? And Gates is "the evil one"?

He wouldn't have gotten his money playing saint, if it wasn't for backdoor deals with governments and hardware producers keeping competition (like linux) out of the market. Old grudges.

Remember when Bill Gates rehabilitated his image after he was the hated richest guy like Elon is now?

He wasn’t hated by anyone but competitors (who aren’t supposed to like you) and programmers, which is a good chunk of the HN crowd but like 1%+ of the general population.

He was hated by anyone who knew what he was up to and who wasn't directly profiting from it.

Most people are completely clueless what's going on in the world of business and tech.

Bill Gates set back the world at least 10 years of progress with his illegal and immoral business practices.

He's still hated by people who don't like Epstein Island. He left Microsoft under a cloud of sex-pest drama.

False equivalence of the highest order.

Bill Gates rehabilitated his image

not sure in what world Gates is still not hated rich guy? :)

Bill Gates dedicated to white-washing his image after MSFT antitrust case.

I mean, philanthropy is great, even more if it is sincere. But lets not forget the kind of business man he was before the 2000s.

He's pretty good at spinning his destruction of everything good in this world, doesn't change anything, he's still the same scumbag.

Musk's offer to buy OpenAI has put Sam in a corner. Given that Softbank recently made a similar offer of $40B, it would be idiotic of OpenAI's board to pass on Elon's offer which is more than double what Softbank offered.

They offered 40B investment at 260B valuation.

That valuation is a speculative figure unlike Musk's offer to buy cash.

> That valuation is a speculative figure unlike Musk's offer to buy cash.

Like his initial offer to buy Twitter… which he tried to go back on and was forced to follow through on via court?

How sure are you that wasn't his plan all along? And isn't the same plan here?

If it was Musk's plan to look foolish and petulant by being forced to buy a company for what he said he would buy it for after briefly trying to pull out of a deal, he succeeded wildly.

But there is no apparent benefit to this: He paid what he had already guaranteed he would pay and received what he at various (but not all) times said he wanted to buy, just with extra steps that made him look worse.

The benefit would be if he succeeded to lower the price point. I am not saying it was a good tactic.

Elon is that another one of your alts?

Yes, but at this point wether there is still a meaning in your original comment is speculative too.

May not be entirely accurate but it's still relevant context.

softbanks offer was at a $260B valuation, but only $40B investment

src:https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/02/07/sof...

I offer 5 USD for X, please explain how this is bad for Elon Musk.

Is there any chance that the board considers it at all?

I mean its mission is to maximize the interests of shareholders, and right now, it's unclear that OpenAI will maintain its dominating position over competitors in the long run.

EDIT: forgot to mention I am not a Trump/Musk guy in any way. Just talking about the deal here.

Is that true for the current board arrangement?

I thought they were set up a some kind of non profit and thier mandate was to pursue other goals not profit. That was what caused the issue with the altman firing previously right?

Even the way they want to go public, as a Public Benefit Corporation, calls into question whether the board then would allow Musk to take a controlling stake.

That is not the mission (it is a non-profit) and does not have to be after they transition either.

The transition involves a sale of the non-profit's assets. This is what Elon has offered to buy.

They can refuse Elon's offer, but they can't turn around and sell the assets 50% cheaper to someone else (as they had previously planned).

Sure they can. They're a non-profit, they don't have a fiduciary duty. It may cause some ramifications for the taxes and accounting but they absolutely can since they don't have shareholders.

ah right

I have some inside information about Sam Altman's company. I don't have funds to pay to a lawyer, but I have video evidence of his firm stealing protected, sensitive and private data. What can I do with that? Can someone help?

I previously had huge respect for Sam Altman, he's a genius I thought and he is indeed very smart. But now I just think he may have delusion of grandeur. He has been asking for trillions [1], then getting $500B Tax Payer money for closed source software [2]. It's not that the ends doesn't justify the mean, but it's never an amount that would be needed to begin with. Is it corruption?

- [1] https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/sam-altman-seeks-trillions-of-do...

- [2] https://venturebeat.com/ai/openai-stargate-is-a-500b-bet-ame...

If this is real, which I doubt, you could post it on YouTube, give it to a journalist whose critical coverage of then you like, send it to Musk, etc.

If it’s not real, as I suspect, I’d go ahead and delete this comment and forget about whatever game you’re playing. They do have money for lawyers.

I know it's the internet, but I promise it's real. I've no financial interests.

But me and my friend's IP was violated and I know many other's too. How they did it, that's quite obvious, but I'm afraid to say anything direct without knowing what to do with this. I could upload this to multiple sites, but would get sued + DMCA take downs unironically. Hope you understand the power-law distribution is quite unfair. I've done multiple videos, just in case and my friend too.

I'm definitely none that defends IP rights or patents and believe in freedom of data, but then again, they should give up their IP too. Just fair, especially given the size of their company and the data they steal, day by day..

Well, give it to Elon, he’s got lawyer money too.

please reach out to Musk

hmm, good advice actually. And easier said than done, but it's quite difficult I think to find a way to talk to him. He has no open DMs

As much as Musk has been unhinged lately I feel he is the good guy if it is really true he is trying to restore the "open" in OpenAI

I don't think he's doing it for altruistic reasons. And he bought Twitter for to "restore free speech". Not exactly what's happened there. He's not even remotely trust worthy in the slightest.

Even when accepting your preferred outcome, why should that influence you in this case?

Musk's already got grok, if he wants to promote his own vision of open-ness.

And DeepSeek published enough that others can get to near-SOTA models for far less than OpenAI spent.

The worst things can come from good intentions. Competition is better

If you think Elon is a "good guy" at this point, he's got a bunch of self driving cars to sell you. Full self driving should be ready by next year.

Same way he fights for freedom of speech.

Btw, I have a bridge to sell, interested?

What are his options, really?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com