xAI Offered $97.4 Billion to Acquire OpenAI Amid Valuation Battle

According to monitoring by Dongcha Beating, Elon Musk’s camp proposed a $97.4 billion bid in February 2025, aiming to acquire the nonprofit organization that controls OpenAI. This target is crucial: OpenAI was planning to restructure its profit-making business into a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC), which is a profit-making entity bound by a public welfare mission. If the nonprofit parent organization continued to hold control, it could still dictate OpenAI’s governance direction. The core purpose of this bid was to establish a market valuation for OpenAI’s nonprofit assets. Musk’s camp believed that if OpenAI wanted to complete the restructuring, it needed to prove that the nonprofit assets were not undervalued. The $97.4 billion offer effectively provided a market reference price to regulators and courts. OpenAI subsequently rejected the offer outright, stating that the company was not for sale and characterizing the bid as an attempt by Musk to disrupt a competitor. Following this, OpenAI adjusted its restructuring plan, emphasizing that the nonprofit organization would continue to control OpenAI Group PBC and hold equity in the profit-making entity valued at approximately $130 billion, in response to concerns about ‘public assets being transferred at a low price.’ This was also the reason for the renewed questioning of Jared Birchall on the fourth day of the trial. He stated that the xAI bid was intended to ensure a reasonable valuation of OpenAI’s nonprofit assets, but could not clarify who determined the $97.4 billion figure, where the valuation analysis came from, or how to distinguish between business decisions and legal strategies. Consequently, OpenAI’s lawyers seized on a new point of attack: whether this bid was a serious acquisition attempt or a litigation weapon to obstruct OpenAI’s restructuring.