Elon Musk makes sensational $97bn bid for OpenAI – but CEO Sam Altman hits back and offers to buy Twitter instead

ELON Musk has had a hostile bid to buy OpenAI, the artificial intelligence firm behind ChatGPT, rejected.

The secret proposal was quickly rebuked by the artificial intelligence company's CEO Sam Altman who instead gave Musk a counter-offer to buy X.

OpenAI is a US tech firm that is seen to be at the forefront of progress in artificial intelligence and its potential to dramatically transform modern life.

Musk, who now has a large role in the Trump administration as well as leading Tesla and X, secretly submitted a bid led by him and a consortium of investors to OpenAI’s board on Monday.

The offer was said to be a sensational $97.4billion (£78.7bn) and is being heavily backed by Musk's own AI company xAI, according to his attorney Marc Toberoff.

The reason for the bid was to make sure the ChatGPT developer would revert it back to its original charitable mission as a nonprofit research lab, Toberoff added.

In previous months, the SpaceX boss sued the artificial intelligence startup in order to block it from transitioning to a profit-making firm.

Altman, CEO of OpenAI since 2019, quickly addressed the offer as he swiftly rejected it and made his own bid back to Musk.

He posted on X: "No thank you but we will buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want."

Musk, also the world’s richest man, posted a one word response of “swindler” on X.

He then called the OpenAI founder “Scam Altman”.

Musk bought Twitter for $44billion (£35.5bn) in 2022 before changing its name to X.

It ramps up an increasingly bitter and extraordinarily public battle between the two tech bosses.

Musk and Altman co- founded OpenAI together in 2015 as a charity with the motive of sharing the progress of artificial intelligence.

He left shortly after Altman set up a profit arm to attract investment and has complained OpenAI has gone against its original mission.

Since then OpenAI has attracted billions of investment from Microsoft and Japanese firm Softbank.

Last October it was valued at $157billion.