Musk's $97.4 billion for OpenAI aims to 'slow down a competitor,' Sam Altman says

PARIS — Elon Musk aims to "slow down a competitor" when the investor group he led put forward a $97.4 billion proposal for control of OpenAI, the company's CEO Sam Altman told CNBC on Tuesday.

Asked how seriously he is taking Musk's bid, which Altman previously declined in a X social media post, the OpenAI chief said: "Not particularly."

"I think it's to slow down a competitor and catch up with his thing, but I don't really know ... to the degree anybody does," Altman added, in response to another reporter's questions on the sidelines of the AI Action Summit in Paris.

CNBC has reached out to Toberoff, Tesla and X for comment.

Elon Musk is leading a group of investors in offering to buy control of OpenAI for $97.4 billion, CNBC confirmed on Monday. The offer is for the nonprofit that oversees the artificial intelligence startup behind ChatGPT.

"It's time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was," Musk's attorney Marc Toberoff said, adding that he submitted an offer on Monday.

Musk has his own AI company called xAI which is behind the chatbot Grok.

- CNBC's Ari Levy and Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.

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