Welcome to 9to5Neural. AI is evolving rapidly. We’re here to keep you informed. Just last week, the buzz was all about DeepSeek paired with R1. While that felt invigorating, the AI landscape seems to be settling — HOLD ON, WHAT?! Elon Musk is attempting to acquire OpenAI? Here we go again…
WSJ: Elon Musk-led consortium offers $97.4 billion for OpenAI control
Jessica Toonkel and Berber Jin report exclusively for The Wall Street Journal that “a group of investors led by Elon Musk is proposing $97.4 billion to acquire the nonprofit that oversees OpenAI,” the organization responsible for ChatGPT.
Musk’s legal representative, Marc Toberoff, stated that the bid was submitted to OpenAI’s board on Monday.
This unsolicited proposal complicates Altman’s meticulously crafted plans for OpenAI’s future, which include transitioning to a for-profit entity and potentially investing up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure via a partnership labeled Stargate. Altman and Musk are already embroiled in legal disputes regarding OpenAI’s strategic direction.
“It’s time for OpenAI to revert to being the open-source, safety-oriented entity it once was,” Musk expressed in a statement relayed by Toberoff. “We will ensure that happens.”
This unexpected bid arises as OpenAI transitions from a nonprofit to a for-profit organization led by Sam Altman. Musk was initially a supporter of OpenAI but departed after being denied control of the firm.
OpenAI gained worldwide attention when it publicly launched the ChatGPT-3 chatbot, heralding the era of large language models and generative AI.
More recently, Musk has initiated legal action against OpenAI, referring to it as ClosedAI. He has also launched xAI, a competing AI company that integrates with and learns from X (formerly Twitter).
In response to the news on X (formerly Twitter), OpenAI’s Altman humorously replied, expressing interest in purchasing Twitter for 10% of Musk’s OpenAI takeover offer. Twitter was, of course, the original name of Musk’s X platform.
Noted X user @greg16676935420 humorously responded to Altman’s tweet, stating, “sharts fired.”
In other developments, ChatGPT unveiled its o3-mini “cost-effective reasoning” model and is wrapping up the design for its first custom chip.
Google has launched Gemini 2.0 Flash to showcase its latest reasoning models, Perplexity is offering Gemini 2.0 Flash to Pro subscribers, and Microsoft has provided OpenAI’s o1 reasoning model to Copilot customers at no cost.
Meanwhile, ChatGPT has surpassed DeepSeek in App Store rankings, with ChatGPT usage reaching an all-time high and continuing to grow. The ChatGPT app has also undergone a redesign that has drawn some criticism. Additionally, OpenAI borrowed concepts from DeepSeek to somewhat unveil the o3-mini “chain of thought” process, albeit with less transparency.
Aside from this, nothing much has transpired except for OpenAI introducing and launching deep research for ChatGPT Pro users after the operator agent feature did not perform as expected. The operator tries to perform tasks for users within its own browser, while deep research automates extensive online searches and generates a report based on specific prompts.
Deep research is OpenAI’s new agent that can independently manage tasks for you — you provide a prompt, and ChatGPT will identify, analyze, and synthesize numerous online sources to create a detailed report akin to a research analyst’s output. It operates on an enhanced version of the forthcoming OpenAI o3 model, tailored for web browsing and data analysis, utilizing reasoning to search, interpret, and analyze vast amounts of text, images, and PDFs online, adjusting as necessary based on the information it encounters.
The capacity to synthesize information is fundamental in crafting new knowledge. As such, deep research represents a significant advancement towards our overarching aim of developing AGI, which we have always envisioned as being able to generate original scientific research.
All of this appears to be worth more than $97.4 billion, but Musk’s attorney claims that the aspiring acquisition group is prepared to surpass any competing offers for control over OpenAI.
Stay tuned for more updates on AI advancements in the next edition of 9to5Neural—exclusively on DMN! Check out the previous issue here.
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