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Unsolicited offer complicates Sam Altman’s plans to convert OpenAI to a for-profit company

A consortium of investors led by Elon Musk is offering $97.4 billion to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI, upping the stakes in his battle with Sam Altman over the company behind ChatGPT.

Musk’s attorney, Marc Toberoff, said he submitted the bid to OpenAI’s board of directors Monday.

The unsolicited offer adds a major complication to Altman’s carefully laid plans for OpenAI’s future, including converting it to a for-profit company and spending up to $500 billion on AI infrastructure through a joint venture called Stargate. He and Musk are already fighting in court over the direction of OpenAI.

“It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was,” Musk said in a statement provided by Toberoff. “We will make sure that happens.”

An OpenAI spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Altman and Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as a charity. In 2019, after Musk left the company and Altman became chief executive, OpenAI created a for-profit subsidiary that has served as a vehicle for it to raise money from Microsoft and other investors. Altman is in the process of turning the subsidiary into a traditional company and spinning out the nonprofit, which would own equity in the new for-profit.

One of the thorniest questions in the conversion has been how the nonprofit will be valued. Musk’s bid sets a high bar and may mean that he, or whoever runs the nonprofit, would end up with a large and possibly controlling stake in the new OpenAI.

The bid is being backed by Musk’s own artificial intelligence company xAI, which could merge with OpenAI following a deal. He also has several investors backing him, including Valor Equity Partners, Baron Capital, Atreides Management, Vy Capital and 8VC, a venture firm led by Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale. Ari Emanuel, CEO of Hollywood company Endeavor, is also backing the offer through his investment fund.

Musk has filed a series of legal complaints accusing OpenAI of betraying its original nonprofit mission by creating a for-profit arm and colluding with its largest investor, Microsoft, to dominate the development of AI.

On Jan. 7, Toberoff sent a letter to the attorneys general in California, where OpenAI is based, and Delaware, where it is incorporated, asking that they open up bidding for the company to determine the fair market value of its charitable assets. Musk and other critics have said they believe OpenAI may undervalue the nonprofit when they spin it out.

OpenAI has called Musk’s legal claims baseless and overreaching and said the nonprofit will receive full value in its ownership stake of the for-profit. The company released documents in December that it said showed Musk previously supported turning OpenAI into a for-profit but walked away because he couldn’t get control of it.

Toberoff said Musk’s investor group is prepared to match or exceed any bids higher than their own.

“If Sam Altman and the present OpenAI Inc. Board of Directors are intent on becoming a fully for-profit corporation, it is vital that the charity be fairly compensated for what its leadership is taking away from it: control over the most transformative technology of our time,” he said.

The day after Trump was inaugurated, Altman appeared alongside the new president and other business leaders to announce a plan called Stargate to invest up to $500 billion over the next four years in U.S. data centers.

Despite his close relationship with Trump, Musk wasn’t part of the announcement.

Hours after the White House press conference, Musk claimed on X that Stargate’s backers didn’t have the promised money and called Altman “a swindler.” Altman disputed Musk’s claims.

Even before Musk’s latest move, OpenAI faced numerous obstacles in what would be one of the biggest ever conversions of a charity to a for-profit company. Rival Meta Platforms sent a letter to California’s attorney general in December expressing its opposition to the plan. And OpenAI is locked in negotiations with Microsoft and other stakeholders over how much equity they should receive in the new company.

OpenAI has pledged to complete the transition by late 2026 as part of a $6.6 billion funding round in October that valued it at $157 billion.

It is separately in talks to raise up to $40 billion in a new funding round that would value the company as high as $300 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported last month. Japanese conglomerate SoftBank would lead the round and is in discussions to invest between $15 billion and $25 billion.

OpenAI and SoftBank are separately trying to raise billions for Stargate, an effort that may become more difficult due to uncertainty about the company’s future sparked by Musk’s bid.

All eyes were on French President Emmanuel Macron Sunday at the end of the first day of the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris after he announced a €109 billion investment package (around $112 billion at current exchange rates) in the French AI ecosystem.

He reiterated this financial commitment from private partners willing to build data centers in France (mostly) and invest in AI startups (sometimes). According to him, the main reason why international investors are choosing France for their next massive data center project comes down to the country’s oversupply of nuclear energy.

“I have a good friend on the other side of the ocean saying ‘drill, baby, drill.’ Here, there is no need to drill, it’s just ‘plug, baby, plug,’” Macron said.

But he doesn’t want to make the AI Action Summit all about France. “For me, this summit is not just the announcement of a lot of investment in France. It’s a wake-up call for a European strategy,” he said.

“Tomorrow, President Van der Leyen will announce the European AI strategy and it will be a very important occasion. But this strategy will be a unique opportunity for Europe to accelerate, to simplify our regulations, to deepen the single market and to invest as well in computing capacities,” he added.

As the European Union wants to streamline regulation, Macron also seems to back this line of thinking. “It’s very clear that we have to synchronize with the rest of the world in terms of transmission, in terms of permitting, in terms of authorization, clinical trials — I mean, in all the different sectors.”

Macron also urged European companies to buy from European startups. According to him, most companies in the U.S. and China favor homegrown solutions. But that’s rarely the case in Europe, especially when it comes to technology.

On Tuesday, global leaders and tech CEOs will unveil a new statement. Many will scrutinize both the content and the list of countries signing the pledge at the end of the summit to see if it’s still possible to agree on a list of priorities when it comes to AI regulation.

BYD makes advances in AI-powered driving software while Musk’s wait for approval grows

BYD, China’s biggest automaker, is widening its lead over Tesla TSLA -0.49%decrease; red down pointing triangle in artificial intelligence-powered driving technology for Chinese car buyers, with the introduction Monday of a new system for low-price mass-market vehicles.

The advances by BYD and other Chinese automakers contrast with Tesla’s inability to release its latest driver-assistance software in China, owing to what Chief Executive Elon Musk described in January as regulatory hurdles.

BYD said it would make its driving-assistance technology system, called “Eyes of God” in Chinese, available in all of its models including an electric compact hatchback costing around $9,600—a price that includes the system. Cars with the technology, which is called DiPilot in English, can self-park and cruise on city roads with minimal human intervention. BYD didn’t say when the service would be available across its vehicles.

BYD’s founder, Wang Chuanfu, said his company had an advantage because it has so many cars on the road to collect data for training its AI system. “If the data from a car is a drop of water, then BYD has an ocean of it,” he said.

BYD’s stock price surged 17% over two days last week in anticipation of Monday’s announcement.

AI-powered software that aims for autonomous driving is evolving quickly in China, the world’s largest EV market. Startups XPeng and Li Auto as well as supplier Huawei Technologies and others have brought to market sophisticated driving-assistance technology.

BYD sold 3.7 million passenger cars last year in China, up 37% from a year earlier. Tesla’s sales grew too but not as quickly, rising 9% to around 660,000 cars. Globally, BYD is nipping at Tesla’s heels as the largest maker of full EVs.

For 10 months, Tesla has been waiting for final approval in China of its own version of AI-powered driving, which it calls “Full Self-Driving (Supervised).” Musk last April obtained a tentative nod after lobbying the Chinese premier in person.

“If BYD can drop this kind of a technology’s cost to such a low price level, then the halo of this technology under the Tesla brand will be undercut,” said Yale Zhang, managing director of Shanghai-based market research firm Automotive Foresight. He added that Tesla cars, which are relatively high-end, don’t directly compete with most of BYD’s mass-market vehicles.

Tesla’s website in China shows FSD priced at the equivalent of $8,800, although for the moment drivers can only get less-advanced services. Tesla didn’t respond to requests for comment.

As EVs become the norm in China—roughly half the passenger cars sold today in China are either full EVs or plug-in hybrids—driving-assistance software has emerged as a key factor for consumers.

The latest technology, including BYD’s, uses AI models to respond to new roads and scenarios and is designed to be able to drive the car without human intervention from the starting point to the destination under certain circumstances. However, given Chinese road rules, drivers are told to stay alert at all times and remain ready to take over.

People in the industry say safety challenges remain, especially in uncommon driving situations that aren’t necessarily reflected in the AI models’ training.

BYD has said it plans to invest about $14 billion in AI and automotive intelligence technology. The company has more than 5,000 engineers working on the technology. BYD also said it has started using AI models developed by Chinese startup DeepSeek.

BYD’s “Eyes of God” system is named after a deity in Chinese mythology with three eyes. It collects data with three cameras in the front windshield. It has already been offering versions of the system for higher-end vehicles.

Besides cameras, BYD’s service also relies on radar and a laser system known as lidar to identify vehicles and pedestrians on the road, which it said helps enhance safety and performance when poor lighting hinders the cameras’ view. BYD doesn’t use lidar for a version that it plans to install for lower-priced vehicles.

Tesla relies more on cameras. Musk has said the approach is more advanced and cost-effective, but it has triggered safety concerns among some regulators and drivers.

Tesla has said it expects Beijing to approve its advanced software this year. There have been few signs of progress so far.

On an earnings call Jan. 29, Musk acknowledged challenges rolling out FSD in China. He said the company was in a quandary because Chinese authorities didn’t allow Tesla to transfer video outside of the country to train its models, while U.S. authorities didn’t let the carmaker train the FSD system in China. He didn’t give details of the restrictions. Tesla has been relying on videos of Chinese streets on the internet to train its system, he said.

Chinese officials are reviewing how Tesla plans to store and process data collected through its FSD service, people familiar with the matter said. China’s technocrats are also focused on determining Tesla’s safety, the people said, after U.S. auto-safety regulators said in October they were investigating crashes involving Tesla’s driver-assistance software. Those crashes occurred in reduced-visibility conditions such as fog or dust.

For Musk, rolling out FSD in China is essential to elevate Tesla to an AI company from a manufacturer of electric vehicles.

Tesla has yet to obtain the official signoff from the ministry in charge of the auto industry, people familiar with the matter said. The company would also need to get approval in individual regions such as Shanghai, where Tesla hopes to offer the software to a limited number of drivers.

Even if Beijing were persuaded of the suitability of Tesla’s FSD, it would consider the approval a chess piece in the geopolitical game emerging in the second Trump administration, given Musk’s proximity to President Trump, analysts said.

“Doing Elon Musk a favor without getting one back is a bad negotiating tactic. One thing you can say about the Chinese is that they are damn good negotiators,” said Bill Russo, Shanghai-based chief executive of Automobility, an advisory firm.

Late Sunday local time the French president, Emmanuel Macron, announced a total of €109 billion in private investments in the AI ecosystem — or around $112 billion at current exchange rates. Paris is hosting the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit this week — the third international summit focused on AI after earlier events in Bletchley Park in the U.K., and Seoul, South Korea.

“I can tell you this evening, Europe is going to speed up, France is going to speed up,” Macron said in a TV interview on France 2 and India’s First Post, teeing up the €109 billion of investment in artificial intelligence which he said would be deployed “over the next few years”.

He added that the pot of money represents “exactly the equivalent for France of what the United States announced with Stargate — $500 billion — it’s the same ratio.” (With 68 million inhabitants, France has 5x fewer people than the U.S.)

TechCrunch started counting all the investment pledges from foreign and local players that have been rolling in over the past few days. With €30B to €50B coming from the United Arab Emirates (and MGX), €20B coming from Canadian investment firm Brookfield, €10B coming from Bpifrance and €3B coming from French telecom company Iliad, we reached a total of up to €83B ($85B) as of Sunday.

A few companies have yet to announce their plans. During the interview, Macron mentioned Orange and Thales as other investors in the program.

Most of the investments will go toward new AI-focused data centers. Hence, the comparison with Stargate.

Macron also discussed French AI startups that have moved their headquarters to the U.S, such as Mistral, Owkin and Wandercraft. He said he believes Europe is still competitive when it comes to artificial intelligence startups — even suggesting that DeepSeek represents an opportunity to catch up.

“There was a race to scale up. Everybody thought you always had to be bigger and stronger. What did DeepSeek do with its open models? They have taken all accessible innovations from the latest OpenAI model and adapted them to their own model, using a more frugal approach,” he said. “Everyone will continue to do this. And that’s why you have to be in this race.”

Arthur Mensch, co-founder and CEO of Mistral, also announced plans to invest billions in an AI cluster. The Paris-based company is arguably the only European company working on foundation models that can compete with models from the likes of Alibaba, Anthropic, DeepSeek, Meta, OpenAI, and others.

“We’re going to do our bit and invest several billion euros in a cluster, which will be set up in Essonne, so that we can train even more efficient systems in just a few months’ time,” Mensch said on French TV TF1.

The announcement could be seen as another reaction to the Stargate Project, the $500 billion investment program led by OpenAI and SoftBank, to build multiple data centers for AI in the United States.

As a reminder, the majority of France’s electricity production comes from nuclear power plants. France also produces more electricity than it uses. On Monday, the French government announced that the country plans to pledge one gigawatt of nuclear power to AI training by the end of 2026.

As tech companies are looking at new locations for power-hungry data centers — ideally powered by carbon-free electricity — France could present itself as an ideal location in Europe for these projects.

“In France, we have an extraordinary lead. We produce some of the most decarbonized, controllable and safe electricity in the world,” said Macron, adding: “We have the safest and most stable grid. And we export this low-carbon electricity.”

According to the French president the country exported 90TWh of electricity to neighboring countries in 2024. France now plans to use that headroom to attract foreign investments.

Ride-hail giant Lyft plans to bring fully autonomous robotaxis, powered by Mobileye, to its app “as soon as 2026” in Dallas, with more markets to follow, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.

The news comes a day before Lyft shares its fourth-quarter and full-year 2024 earnings report, and it coincides with Waymo’s preparations to launch a commercial robotaxi service in partnership with Uber in Austin and, later, Atlanta. Tesla has also shared plans to start an autonomous ride-hail operation in Austin in June.

Marubeni, a Japanese conglomerate with experience managing fleets, will own and finance the Mobileye-equipped vehicles that will show up on Lyft’s ride-hailing app. While Lyft has not yet disclosed its OEM partner for the launch, Mobileye’s advanced driver assistance technology is already integrated into vehicles from Audi, Volkswagen, Nissan, Ford, General Motors, and more.

Lyft also didn’t share how many vehicles it would launch in Dallas to start, but Jeremy Bird, Lyft’s chief policy officer, told TechCrunch that the plan is to scale to thousands of vehicles across multiple cities after Lyft’s Texas debut.

The Marubeni partnership feels a little like a non sequitur for Lyft; the company owns subsidiaries across almost every industry, from food and real estate to agriculture and energy, but doesn’t have a large presence in ride-hail or autonomous vehicles.

That said, over the past few years, Marubeni has begun to dabble. In 2021, the company partnered with Mobileye and transit planning app Moovit to launch an on-demand mobility service in Japan. TechCrunch has reached out to learn if that collaboration is still active.

Mobileye actually served as the intermediary between Lyft and Marubeni, said Bird. And for Lyft’s asset-light business model, finding a partner to commit to owning the fleet of vehicles is crucial.

“Mobileye’s got the technology and the relationship with the OEMs, and we have the platform, so it’s the ownership of the fleet that’s the big missing piece,” Bird told TechCrunch. “And when you have somebody that has experience in [fleet management] and the resources and the willingness to be a first-mover, that changes the game for us.”

Marubeni will leverage Lyft’s Flexdrive service to help manage its fleet and keep asset utilization high. Flexdrive is Lyft’s service to connect drivers who don’t own vehicles with rental cars. Bird says Lyft’s experience managing fleets – which includes charging, cleaning, and maintaining the vehicles, as well as real estate for operations – will go a long way towards supporting future autonomous rides.

Bird noted that Lyft is in talks with every major autonomy player about bringing them onto the platform. And Lyft probably wants to kick those conversations into gear as its main competitor Uber snatches up partnerships with other AV companies. Aside from Waymo, Uber has announced deals with Wayve, Avride, Serve Robotics, Nuro, Aurora Innovation, Waabi, and others.

Outside of its Mobileye deal, Lyft has only announced plans to launch AVs with May Mobility in Atlanta this year.

Lyft’s slower roll towards autonomy isn’t for lack of trying, though. The company has had its share of bad luck in the AV arena.

Lyft previously partnered with startups Motional and Argo AI to launch robotaxi services in Las Vegas – initially with a human safety driver behind the wheel, but the plan was to go fully driverless. Then Motional paused that partnership in May after slashing its workforce, and Argo AI shut down in 2022. Lyft had a stake in Argo, and took a $135.7 million hit when the company folded.

Before that, Lyft had tried to develop autonomous vehicle technology in-house. Uber did the same. Both sold their AV units; Uber to Aurora in December 2020, and Lyft to Toyota’s Woven Planet in April 2021.

Bird acknowledged that Uber’s spree of AV partnerships “does create urgency,” but he said it also signals that the deployment of robotaxis won’t be concentrated with just one company.

He said Lyft’s goal now is to build solid partnerships both with companies developing AV tech and with companies that want to own fleets of autonomous vehicles, which aligns with Lyft’s asset-light business model.

“The rest of the value chain is where we really want to play a role, and that’s in fleet management, demand generation, and marketplace,” Bird said.

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