Updated: 12 February 2026
On Monday, February 10, 2026, the technology world witnessed one of the most audacious corporate maneuvers in Silicon Valley history.Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and the founder of the artificial intelligence company xAI, led a consortium of investors in a hostile, unsolicited bid of $97.4 billion.
His target was not a typical publicly traded giant, but the non-profit entity that controls OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT.
This offer was not merely a financial transaction; it was a tactical nuclear weapon deployed in a decade-long philosophical and personal war between Musk and his former protege, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI. The bid was designed to stop Altmans plan to convert OpenAI into a fully for-profit Public Benefit Corporationa move Elon Musk argues is a betrayal of the organization's founding principles.
The response from Altman was swift and blistering. Taking to X (formerly Twitter), the platform Musk owns, Altman posted:
"no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want"
Musks reply was a single, venomous word:
"Swindler"
To understand how two of the most powerful men in technology went from co-founding a non-profit to save humanity to trading insults and lawsuits in 2026, we must peel back the layers of legal filings, leaked emails, and philosophical divergences. This is not just a feud about money; it is a battle over Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) machines that can think and learn like humansand who gets to control them.
1. Fear of a Google Monarchy (2015)
To analyze the current hostility, we must define the entity at the center of the storm: OpenAI.
OpenAI was founded in December 2015 not as a business, but as a non-profit research laboratory. The catalyst for its creation was a shared anxiety between Musk and Altman regarding Google (now Alphabet Inc.) and its AI division, DeepMind.
The "DeepMind" Anxiety
In the early 2010s, Elon Musk was deeply concerned that Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, was not taking AI safety seriously. Musk feared that if a single corporation like Google achieved AGI first, it would have "one mind to rule the world," potentially leading to an accidental dystopia.
Musk and Altman, then the president of startup accelerator Y Combinator, decided to create a counter-force.
Learn: Non-Profit Organization
A non-profit is an organization dedicated to furthering a particular social cause or advocating for a shared point of view, rather than distributing its income to shareholders or leaders.
The founding agreement of OpenAI was built on three pillars, which Musk refers to constantly in his 2024 and 2025 lawsuits:
- Open Source: The technology would be freely available to the public ("open") to prevent power concentration.
- Non-Profit: It would not be driven by commercial incentives.
- For Humanity: Its fiduciary duty was to humanity, not investors.
Musk donated approximately $44 million to seed the organization, believing he was funding a safety valve for the human race.
2. The Schism: The Failed Coup of 2018
The relationship began to fracture in 2017. As deep learning models grew larger, it became apparent that training them required massive computational power ("compute") and databoth of which cost hundreds of millions of dollars. A non-profit relying on donations could not compete with Google's war chest.
The "Conflict of Interest" Narrative
Publicly, Musk left the OpenAI board in 2018 citing a potential conflict of interest with Tesla, which was developing its own AI for self-driving cars.
The Hidden Power Struggle
However, later reports and legal discoveries revealed a different story. Musk had proposed that he take control of OpenAI and run it himself to catch up to Google. Altman and the other founders rejected this consolidation of power. Stung by the rejection, Musk walked away and cut off his funding.
This left OpenAI in a precarious position: it had a grand mission but no money to pay for the supercomputers needed to achieve it.
3. OPENAI's Capped Profits and Microsoft (2019-2023)
Facing bankruptcy or irrelevance, Altman engineered a unique corporate structure in 2019.
Entity Definition: Capped-Profit Company
Altman created a "capped-profit" subsidiary called OpenAI LP. Investors could put money in and earn a return, but that return was capped at a certain multiple (e.g., 100x). Any profit beyond that cap would flow back to the non-profit parent company.
This structure allowed OpenAI to raise $13 billion from Microsoft.
Entity Definition: Microsoft
A distinct entity from OpenAI, Microsoft is a publicly traded technology giant (NASDAQ: MSFT). It provides the cloud computing infrastructure (Azure) that OpenAI runs on. In exchange, Microsoft received a 49% stake in the for-profit arm of OpenAI and exclusive rights to commercialize its technology.
The "Betrayal" From OPENAI According to Elon Musk
For Musk, this was the moment the mission died. In his view, OpenAI had become a "closed-source, maximum-profit subsidiary of Microsoft." He argued that the non-profit boardthe entity meant to ensure safetyhad been hollowed out and made subservient to corporate greed.
The release of ChatGPT in November 2022, which triggered the current AI boom, only deepened Musk's resentment. The tool he helped fund was now the fastest-growing consumer application in history, and he had zero equity and zero control.
4. The Feud Between Elon Musk and Sam Altman (2023-2025)
The feud remained mostly passive-aggressive until 2023, when Musk launched his own rival company, xAI, and released a chatbot named Grok.
Comparison: ChatGPT vs. Grok
- ChatGPT (OpenAI): is an AI software and chatbot Designed with "Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback" (RLHF) to be helpful, harmless, and honest. Critics, including Musk, call this "woke" or heavily censored.
- Grok (xAI): Grok is an Artificial Intelligence chatbot designed to be "rebellious," answer "spicy" questions, and access real-time data via the X platform. It positions itself as the "anti-woke" alternative.
The "Shakespearean" Lawsuit From Elon Musk
In March 2024, Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman, alleging breach of contract. He claimed Altman had "deceived" him into funding a non-profit that was secretly designed to become a for-profit money printer.
Musks legal complaint contained a line that defined the era:
"OpenAI has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft. Under its new board, it is not just developing but is actually refining an AGI to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity."
He called the betrayal a deceit of "Shakespearean proportions."
Altman and OpenAI hit back by releasing old emails where Musk himself acknowledged that OpenAI would eventually need to pivot to a for-profit model to survive, and where he suggested merging OpenAI with Tesla. This painted Musk not as a spurned altruist, but as a jealous competitor who was angry he didn't own the winning ticket.
5. The 2026 Explosion: The $97.4 Billion Hostile Bid
This brings us to the present day, February 2026.
The context is critical: OpenAI is currently attempting to shed its complex "capped-profit" skin and become a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC).
Learn: Public Benefit Corporation (PBC)
A type of for-profit corporate entity that includes positive impact on society, workers, the community, and the environment in addition to profit as its legally defined goals.
This transition would allow OpenAI to accept massive investment from SoftBank (rumored at $40 billion) and raise its valuation to $300 billion. However, to do this, the Non-Profit Board must essentially "sell" or transfer its control.
The "Wrench in the Gears"
Musks offer of $97.4 billion is technically an offer to buy the assets of the non-profit or to capitalize the non-profit such that it doesn't need to sell out to SoftBank.
By making this offer, Musk is trying to:
- Block the SoftBank Deal: If the non-profit board has a fiduciary duty to maximize resources for its mission, rejecting a $97 billion cash infusion from Musk (which would keep it non-profit) in favor of a corporate restructuring might be legally difficult to justify.
- Expose Greed: If Altman rejects the money to keep the non-profit independent, it provesin Musk's eyesthat Altman's true goal is personal enrichment through the for-profit equity he would gain in a restructuring.
The Social Media Fallout of Elon Musk and Sam Altman
The exchange on X on February 10, 2026, perfectly encapsulates the dynamic.
Altman's Jibe: "no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want"
- Analysis: This is a savage reference to Musks purchase of Twitter (now X) for $44 billion in 2022. Since then, Fidelity and other investors have marked down the value of X by over 70%, suggesting it might be worth around $10-12 billion. Altman is mocking Musks business acumen and the destruction of value at X.
Musk's Retort: "Swindler"
- Analysis: This harkens back to the lawsuit. Musk views Altman as a con artist who used Musk's money and reputation to build a lab, only to steal the intellectual property for a commercial enterprise.
In a follow-up interaction, Altman posted regarding the upcoming legal discovery process:
"I'm really excited to get Elon under oath in a few months... It's like Christmas in April."
This suggests Altman believes Musks own communications will vindicate OpenAI and embarrass Musk further.
6. The Broader Cast: Anthropic and the "Mob"
While Musk and Altman trade blows, a third player is defining the landscape of AI safety.
Entity Definition: Anthropic
An AI safety and research company founded by siblings Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei, who were former executives at OpenAI. They left OpenAI because they shared Musks concerns about the company becoming too commercial and unsafe.
In a recent interview (February 2026), Dario Amodei warned of a different danger. While Musk worries about "woke" AI and Altman pushes for "abundance," Amodei warned that AI could lead to 20% unemployment within five years, wiping out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs.
Amodei warned tech giants:
"You're going to get a mob coming for you if you don't do this in the right way. You can't just go around saying we're going to create all this abundance, a lot of it is going to go to us, and we're going to be trillionaires."
This triangulates the feud:
- Musk: Wants AI open and "anti-woke," but controlled by him.
- Altman: Wants AI rapidly deployed and commercialized to fund the mission.
- Amodei: Wants AI slowed down to prevent societal collapse.
Why the $97 Billion Bid Matters
It forces the "Non-Profit" bluff. If OpenAI is truly about the mission, a $97 billion endowment would secure that mission forever without needing to sell products. By rejecting it, Altman confirms that the goal is product deployment and market dominance, not just research.
However, Altman's legal defense (voiced by his lawyer Jordan Eth) is that Musk doesn't want to save OpenAI; he wants to absorb it.
"Musk would have OpenAI, Inc. transfer all of its assets to him, for his economic benefit and that of his competing AI business and hand-picked private investors."
The End of the Alliance
The feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman is the defining narrative of the AI age. It is a story of a broken friendship, but more importantly, it is a proxy war for the future of the human economy.
If Musk wins his legal battles or his hostile bid traction, it could force OpenAI to "open" its weights, potentially commoditizing the technology and hurting Microsoft's investment. If Altman wins, OpenAI completes its transformation into a corporate behemoth, likely the first trillion-dollar AI company, leaving Musk on the sidelines of the revolution he helped start.
As of February 2026, with insults flying on X and billions of dollars on the table, one thing is clear: the "Open" in OpenAI is gone. It is now a fortress, besieged by its original architect.
Key Quotes References
- "Deceit of Shakespearean proportions." Elon Musk, in his 2024 lawsuit filing regarding OpenAI's shift to Microsoft.
- "No thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want." Sam Altman, X post, Feb 10, 2026.
- "Swindler." Elon Musk, X post reply, Feb 10, 2026.
- "I feel bad for the guy. I think it's to slow down a competitor and catch up with his thing, but I don't really know." Sam Altman, Bloomberg TV interview, referring to Musk's motivations.
- "Hot-air philanthropy... long-con." Musk's lawyers, describing Altmans management style in court filings.
- "You're going to get a mob coming for you if you don't do this in the right way." Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, warning about AI inequality in Feb 2026.
