Musk-led group makes $97B bid for control of OpenAI
778 comments
·February 10, 2025alpha_squared
TrackerFF
How much of it is tied up to a criminally overvalued Tesla stock though?
Sure, Tesla could go to zero and he'd still be a fabulously wealthy man, but with how things are moving - It wouldn't surprise me that he's about the fall down the ranks. Let's see how much power he has once the "richest man in the world" aura fades away.
dustingetz
was looking for a musk margin call in 2023, no such luck, now he’s VP and markets are still fake
margalabargala
We'll see. After throwing out a few Nazi salutes, Tesla sales have been tanking in Europe.
UltraSane
Tesla sales are collapsing globally partly due to Musk's mental breakdown and are not likely to recover much, especially since Tesla no longer really has a CEO.
rlt
[flagged]
yodsanklai
My hope is that he'll eventually make some big mistakes that will send him to jail. Or does presidential grace give him total immunity?
WheatMillington
I've been hearing about the inevitable decline of Tesla for about 10 years now.
TomK32
It has started long ago with the Cybertruck release delayed by two years and then not many wanted to buy it. The new roadster was originally announced for 2020, might come this year. The groundbreaking of Gigafactory Mexico has been delayed and I doubt the recent tariff madness helps. Level 5 FSD has been promised to be achieved in three years, that was 2013. With sales tanking, I do wonder if the $1 billion expected revenue in CO2-pooling[1] (from EU competition alone) will be at risk or if the EU can come up with some tariff in response to Trump's new attempt of tariffs on EU products. Also, after two failed attempts to get this massive compensation package as CEO approved by a court, will he try and fail again? Now that he's a squatter in some D.C. government building?
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/stella...
llamaimperative
For how many of those did BYD exist in western markets and for how many was the Tesla brand toxic to the demographics that care about climate?
New things happen all the time, even things that had been predicted to happen sooner than they did.
handsclean
Nobody likes the guy, but I think a lot of people let their distaste for a person blind them to their strategy. Since Musk’s early days co-founding PayPal, his MO has been to start with a small fortune, bet it on a fortune 10x that, and repeat, abandoning each project after it serves its purpose. It’s clear at this point that his next step has been political power since at least the Twitter purchase, and that step just had its Tesla takeoff moment. I think there’s basically no chance he fails to leverage that into an even greater fortune than everything that came before, even while letting Tesla and the rest run on autopilot.
Fading global Tesla sales are consistent with this: it’s what happens when you go all in on one party in one nation, and Musk has always been willing to bet big on his next move. Also, I doubt it’ll last.
Remember also that Trump is about to die and Musk is 53. What fortune is 10x greater than Musk’s current massive wealth and political power? The office of super-President that he’s now suddenly so engaged in helping create “for Trump”.
IncreasePosts
Musk owns 42% of the $350B SpaceX, so he would still be the 6th richest person in the world(tied with Sergey bring) if TSLA and all his other investments went to $0.
rokoono
[dead]
godelski
> How much of it is tied up to a criminally overvalued Tesla stock though?
- Dec 15 2022: Sells 22m shares for $3.6bn
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/15/investing/elon-musk-tesla-stock-sale/index.html
- Nov 4-8 2022: Sells 19.5m shares for $4bn
https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-business-climate-and-environment-9ab47198753931c7bea91f6e678f1d17
- Feb 2022: Elon has $11bn tax bill from a $23bn taxable income. Article discusses 2 sells
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/10/investing/elon-musk-tesla-zero-tax-bill/index.html
- This article says notes $1.52 billion between 2014-2018
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/20/elon-musk-says-he-will-pay-over-11-billion-in-taxes-this-year.html
I believe we can agree that this sum of money falls into the category of "never will be poor." Where it is nearly (if not entirely) impossible to spend such sums of money. Remember, we're talking about a sum of money where you could easily line up $100 bills all the way across California, from top to bottom[0].
[0] A bill is 155.956mm x 66.294mm (0.155956m x 0.066294m) and CA's dimensions are 400km x 1220km. So 1220000 / 0.066294 = 18.403e6. You need ~$18.4m to do this with singles, $368.01 with $20's, and $1.84bn with $100's. So $30bn is 16 rows (2.5 meters wide) and $391bn (current Forbes value) is 212.5 rows, or 33 meters wide. A bill is 0.11mm thick if you want to calculate height. Maybe someone can come up with another fun visualization, because this one is well beyond imaginable already.
jodrellblank
> “Where it is nearly (if not entirely) impossible to spend such sums of money.”
I’ve been looking at the idea of a tunnel between the UK and Ireland. Recent rough estimates were €15Bn and that probably didn’t include high speed trains on each side.
A new city, a 500km/h maglev line, paying spacex to build a moon base, launching a billion dollar prize fund for room temperature superconductor or graphene space elevator material research, paying a geoengineering project like military jets releasing reflective vapour into the upper atmosphere (last time I saw that price estimate was 2Bn and that was years ago), building a vanity vehicle project from scratch like reigniting the ocean going Ekranoplans or the Fairey Rotodyne, building the Elon Musk solar power plants in Texas to “unleash American energy“ with his name on it…
You would not casually spend that much on Lamborghinis and mansions in the Hollywood Hills, but if you wanted to do audacious or philanthropic things or get your name on mega-projects there are many countries with billion dollar projects one could fund. $30Bn would pay the city of Los Angeles budget for 2-3 years.
$30Bn he could give every American $90.
theGnuMe
So there is a plan here. One is to sue or stop the SEC.
Tesla is a meme coin at this point. However there are these pesky shareholders to deal with.
wnc3141
criminally overvalued is an interesting term to explore. I wonder when after all this shakes out in the courts, how much of his oligarchal access to government will be seen as illegal, therefore undermining any stock premium Tesla has from that access to government.
fujinghg
I reckon Musk is so over extended that the only reason he’s doing what he’s doing is to basically rob what he can to cover it before a bigger fish comes along and he falls off a yacht like Madoff.
fastball
How do you mean? There were major loans to buy Twitter, but AFAIK Musk brought on a bunch of other people so that's not entirely on him. Other than that what is he extended into?
ak_111
He single handedly also vindicated one of the most authoritarian regimes - China - in how it slapped Jack Ma as soon as he started entering politics and gaining influence beyond tech entrepreneurship.
steve_adams_86
I can’t agree that his bad behaviour vindicates other bad behaviour. Checks and balances would be a far better solution than what was done to Ma. We should never consider a state manipulating politics so forcefully to be vindicated because someone seeks to exploit the state. It vindicates the very systems Musk seeks to destroy, showing the USA needs strong and more assertive checks and balances.
I think I see what you mean, but it’s dangerous to casually say such a hostile and powerful state’s corruption could ever be vindicated.
zfg
Clearly Jack Ma should have pledged his commitment to China's core socialist values like Musk did: https://www.mediaite.com/news/elon-musk-signs-letter-pledgin...
And maybe Jack Ma should also have advocated for Taiwan's submission to China like Musk did: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/08/elon-musk...
blackeyeblitzar
China requires that pledge for basically anyone with power or wealth. For example, they added a new law, forcing all of the AI companies in China (like DeepSeek) to uphold socialist values and all that. And TikTok, which they pretend is a separate company from ByteDance based in Singapore, forces US executives to sign a pro CCP pledge as well:
https://dailycaller.com/2025/01/14/tiktok-forced-staff-oaths...
This is why tariffs, divestment from China, and divestment of Chinese ownership in American companies or land is important. I also think it is reasonable to treat such pledges made by American residents to a foreign government as treasonous.
lupusreal
Nothing vindicates the CCP.
They enact laws guaranteeing free speech and human rights, then execute their critics and sell their organs.
ak_111
That's what I am saying, Musk shenanigan so bad they EVEN vindicated CCP.
ks2048
The dreams of Musk/Trump
TheRealNGenius
[dead]
blackeyeblitzar
I am pretty disturbed by how musk is silent on issues concerning China and the CCP. To me it is a big risk that Tesla depends on access to the Chinese market to justify their valuation. Musk clearly will not say anything even slightly negative about the CCP, even though he personally values free speech and other liberal values. So can he really be trusted with control of companies like SpaceX?
In fact, I am worried about whether that influence from China extends further. How else do you explain Trump delaying enforcement of the TikTok ban? If anything he should be going a lot harder against China.
ncallaway
> even though he personally values free speech and other liberal values
I don’t think there’s any reasonable evidence of this, given he has sued media matters for publishing factual information, and even encouraged AGs to open criminal investigations.
Musk has absolutely no respect for free speech. He regularly uses the power of the government to punish anyone that dares criticize him. He makes a mockery of free speech.
ivewonyoung
> Musk clearly will not say anything even slightly negative about the CCP, even though he personally values free speech and other liberal values. So can he really be trusted with control of companies like SpaceX?
He literally posted an AI generated video of Xi in Winnie the Pooh garb.
> How else do you explain Trump delaying enforcement of the TikTok ban
Because he wanted people to watch his inauguration on TikTok. Plus the intention was always that TikTok would be bought by a US company, not to shut it down entirely given the extensive number of people who rely it on both for income and for entertainment. The issue was that the Supreme Court ruled on the takedown being legal just 2 days before the ban deadline, giving no time for an acquisition. Even Joe Biden refused to enforce the ban on TikTok on the last day of his presidency.
> If anything he should be going a lot harder against China
Tariffs on China just kicked in.
yodsanklai
> "financial terrorist"
As a thought experiment, I like to wonder what would be the maximal amount of damage to humanity an extremely wealthy person could do entirely legally.
Or if not damage, just trolling. For instance, writing X on the moon or something like that.
_huayra_
Easy: buy media companies to sow political division and pollute the discourse, buy political influence to restrict access to open and unbiased education to ensure the populace cannot engage in critical thinking, then poison the environment in myriad ways until people in their 20s require a dozen rounds of IVF to have kids (or more likely, just giving up because of the ruinious state of inflation compared to incomes).
ydnaclementine
good thing even parts of this would never really happen haha
EA-3167
Come on... endlessly wealthy and wants to do harm? There's only one real, obvious answer: Engineer a plague, or a series of plagues targeting food crops, livestock, and humans. Make something as contagious as measles that kills a third of people reliably, spread it multiple global focal points at once, and you could topple the world pretty effectively. If you attacked the economy and food supply at the same time I don't think there would be any coming back from that.
It would be insane, an apocalyptic fantasy that few could afford outside of (hopefully somewhat) accountable or at least pragmatic governments. But a very rich person could afford it.
And as much as information warfare is terrifying, biological warfare is much worse. I get your "it's already here" point, but lets really take the question at face value and run with it.
edit: Consider that a group MUCH less wealthy than Elon Musk was able to experiment with nuclear weapons, and managed to carry out a sarin attack.
hightrix
> I like to wonder what would be the maximal amount of damage to humanity an extremely wealthy person could do entirely legally.
We seem to be watching this in real time. Musk bought influence over the US president, gained access to critical US systems, and is about to benefit from the EO pausing of enforcement of law banning bribes to foriegn nationals.
He bought power. He is buying more power. We are watching a supervillian rise.
johnnyanmac
Previously I would have said buying election results. But apparently the electoral college makes it surprisingly cheap. Musk buys twitter for 44 billion dollars and yet he only needed a quarter of a billion to buy the American government.
ivewonyoung
The dems outspent republicans by a billion or so, so 250M didn't do much. If it did, Kamala would've won by a lot.
https://www.axios.com/2024/10/31/democrats-republicans-ad-sp...
Way more billionaires supported Kamala vs. Trump (83 vs 52).
ben_w
> entirely legally.
Hypothetically, would it be legal to fund a president whose policy was "let's nuke everyone"?
jasongill
Apparently, the answer is "yes"
SequoiaHope
Oil companies have been doing this for 100 years.
null
UltraSane
I wonder what would happen if Musk just paid $1 million to every single women who was willing to be inseminated with his sperm and $100,000/year/child to raise them and he ended up having thousands of kids.
seunosewa
I thought he was doing something like that already.
CamperBob2
As a thought experiment, I like to wonder what would be the maximal amount of damage to humanity an extremely wealthy person could do entirely legally.
Ian Fleming explored that idea rather effectively with Hugo Drax in the original Moonraker novel (which doesn't have much besides the name in common with the movie.)
The way things are playing out, Drax must have been Musk's childhood hero.
ModernMech
Yup! You guessed it!
https://www.inverse.com/article/32100-elon-musk-favorite-jam...
The person who asked 7 years ago never forgot that and made the same connection as you:
https://www.threads.net/@pixelastronaut/post/DFFJF9GxE7D?xmt...
guybedo
I don't get what is "financial terrorism" here:
He's making an offer to buy something at twice the price of the other offer on the table.
I'm not sure it'd be a good deal for Musk but it looks like a good deal for the seller.
null
z7
I don't understand it either. Why is Elon Musk a "terrorist"? And why is this the most upvoted post? Maybe being European limits my ability to comprehend American political rhetoric.
togetheragainor
The American left, who hates Musk because he’s an outspoken and unrepentant capitalist (among other reasons), has become prone to hyperbole. Anything right of center is the “far right,” anyone who opposes illegal immigration is a Nazi, anybody who opposes DEI policies is a Nazi, Republicans are fascists, capitalists are terrorists and murderers, etc.
zozbot234
He wants the development of strong AI to go to the benefit of everyone on Earth (or Terra) as per OpenAI nonprofit's original mission, and is using a financial offer to try and ensure this. This makes him officially a "financial Terrist" and Terrist kinda sounds like that other word if you say it out loud slowly enough, in the right Texas accent. It all makes total sense!
tryptophan
I typically like Elon about 70% of the time, but I need to agree here. I don't quite understand how he suddenly got so much influence.
ls_stats
>I typically like Elon about 70% of the time
>I don't quite understand how he suddenly got so much influence.
then you don't know much about him
enumjorge
Almost everything that is happening in US politics was telegraphed beforehand if you were looking carefully enough. If Musk's current level of influence and his actions are a surprise to anyone, I'd politely suggest that they augment their sources of information.
fuzztester
no, rather, GP tryptophan doesn't know much about {him|her|it}self.
orwin
He always had it? Money give influence naturally.
I've listened to a history podcast about the robber barons and how following the backlash and dismantlement of the Standard oil, industrialist started buying articles, sometime even newspapers to sell their stories, and in the US, it worked wonderfully. You still have the brand "Quaker" that was born at the time, and probably a dozen other, where they manipulated their own famillial history to build an image, and hide the fact that children died in their mine or that they just had 20 redneck strikers killed. It's not as bad today, but building a personal brand by buying puff articles, fondations. Buying goodwill and influence was always present since at least that time (Honestly, Berkshire Hathaway made at least some of its money on WB reputation, so tech billionaires are not the only kind of CEO who do it)
sangnoir
> He always had it? Money give influence naturally.
Not as much as he has now: he was famously frustrated by the California state government's Covid lockdown mandates, and was pretty powerless against them. That frustration is probably what led him to buy influence in the Trump campaign,and later administration. Money can take you so far, political power will take you further for imposing your will on others.
The "Shock-and-awe"/blitzkrieg strategy is another force-multiplier. By moving much faster than the bureaucracy and legal system can respond, the question on whether he has the power or authority to do the things he's doing may become moot.
jredwards
I liked Elon until about 2018. Since then he's gradually degraded from "interesting founder" to "guy who picks fights about weird topics on the internet" to "absurdist oligarch actively working to destroy institutions which support average Americans."
I certainly suspect that there were always elements of what he's become that just weren't as publicly apparent.
yibg
How about:
- hypocrite: free speech only for topics I approve of
- bully: and a school yard style bully at that. Calling people crude names etc. Remember "pedo guy"?
- liar: "full self driving early next year" for how many years in a row?
- reckless: doesn't seem to really care about all the tesla crashes while on auto pilot, giant safety (for others) hazard that is the cybertruck
And this is all before the current political drama.
sho_hn
I stopped liking Musk when his first wife's tell-all "I Was a Starter Wife" came out in Marie Claire in 2010. Yes, penned by a disgruntled former spouse, it felt nonetheless authentic and immediately believable, and all the events since have generally confirmed her characterization of him.
As so often, it's how they treat the women around them that tells you a lot about men.
akudha
What did you like about him until 2018? He is not some visionary or genius or even smart. Neither is/was he a decent person to deal with (read up on his PayPal days). He is however, extraordinarily ruthless and thin skinned.
So what is it that you saw in him that you liked him?
briffle
Yep, hard to respect a guy who spent how many years screaming that full self driving will be out by next quarter!?
m_fayer
I really like “absurdist oligarch”. “Rich awkward joker” also comes to mind.
calebio
> I don't quite understand how he suddenly got so much influence.
memetics
Trasmatta
He spent $44 billion on his own personal propaganda machine, and then used even more money to purchase the US presidency
phonon
His personal contribution was $20 Billion. The rest was other investors and loans Twitter is responsible for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition_of_Twitter_by_Elon...
fastball
He was actually forced to buy Twitter.
So the judiciary forced him to acquire his own propaganda machine. Activist judges once again to blame?
d0gsg0w00f
[flagged]
rurp
You're forgetting how the Twitter acquisition actually went. Almost immediately after the contract was signed he started trying to weasel out of it with various absurd excuses. He only stopped trying to violate the purchase contract once it became clear he was almost certain to lose in court.
jaybrendansmith
He is breaking the law, full stop. Sorry but you don't get to do that in a Republic without consequence. Process matters when it comes to regulation, because without it you get unchecked power and tyranny.
rorylawless
If pre-Musk twitter was in the hands of censorship, what is it now? By all accounts it is a bot-infested echo chamber for his own bizarre obsessions where dissent is quickly stamped out.
pfisch
Oh, I didn't realize he freed twitter from the clutches of censorship...
esskay
Twitters got more censorship than it ever had, and what's left is a cesspool of porn, conspiracy theories, elon ass lickers and spam.
dyauspitr
I liked Elon 90% of the time 5 years ago. Now honestly I don’t want him to build a whites only mars base.
JKCalhoun
5 years ago?
7 years ago he called Vernon Unsworth a pedophile. That was enough for me.
throw16180339
N.K. Jemisin's SF short story Emergency Skin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Skin) is pretty much this.
fastball
[flagged]
electriclove
Do you really think it will be whites only?
moogly
> Now honestly I don’t want him to build a whites only mars base.
I do because the Earth would be rid of him and we could maybe have at least 1 slow news day.
nicoburns
> It feels like Musk is single-handedly making a great case for why unlimited accumulation of wealth is a bad idea.
Musk is bad, but he's only really one example amongst thousands. And there aren't many examples of where this has ever been a good thing.
UncleMeat
Yep. Taxing billionaires is not about generating a lot of money for everybody else. It is about limiting the power of the most powerful people. It is bad for society for people to have this much money.
gip
I thought competition was exactly what business was about and how the capitalist system was functioning and financing itself? I don't condone Musk's actions but I'm not sure how he ends up as a terrorist. That looks like aggressive competition in a line of business. It's not clear how critical infrastructure or public safety would be negatively affected by his actions, therefore not sure what to think of it.
PS: I do believe Musk should be subject to the federal criminal conflict of interest statute given his position in gov.
miramba
Rather than discussing crazy Elon, I would like to hear insights on what this means? Why does he want OpenAI? Is there a chance to ever get this money back? Who is financing this after the twitter failure?
irs
Sam’s reply on twitter[0]
no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want
minimaxir
Elon's response: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1889062013109703009
> Swindler
In another tweet chain: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1889063777792069911
> Scam Altman
polotics
wow I had no idea the level of discourse on that x website was so low, has it always been like this?
elaus
Reading the other comments in this Twitter thread it seems like it's gotten much worse than in the years before. It's seems so much more political and radicalized now.
vitorgrs
Depends. It's way worse now. But I think the main difference was X Premium or whatever they call now.
Basically, if you buy the verified badge, you get promoted on the algo timeline, comments, everything. And people also getting money by views...
This affects in two ways, first, not a lot of people want to give Money to elon, and the elon fans want to pay.
Second, this also makes a lot of people posting everywhere posting insane things just to get views and money.
Oh, there's also the bots that just reposts other people tweets now on the comments.
Why comments? It's how you get more views (money).
UncleOxidant
It wasn't always this bad for most people. It's fREe SpEEcH aBSolUtISm now.
b212
Do not check out Kanye West on x unless you want to see what no censorship means (spoiler alert: a guy with 33m followers posting porn and glorifying nazism).
johnnyanmac
It's been so for a long time amongst casual twitter. I'd say celebrities shitslinging at each otherin public became more common place around the pandemic though. No, Elon's purchase and unbanning of fascists did not help at all.
JKCalhoun
Wow, it's like 12 year old boys or something.
Where the adults at?
godelski
I stopped going to Twitter often, but since Elon's tweets always appear in my notifications, they frequently are one or two words.
Yes I know I can mute. But the settings can get reset and this has happened several times.
Analemma_
Yes and no. Yes the level of discourse was always that bad, but previously the people posting at that level were Internet randos, not the President of the United States and the executives of our most important businesses.
I do wonder if these clowns appreciate the long-term consequences of shattering the mystique of business executives. It's all memey fun and games in the moment, but later on when you have to make the counterargument against "why do these people deserve their billions? why shouldn't they all go up against the wall instead?" and you try to say "Well, it's because they're so talented and brilliant; doing so would cause incredible harm to the economy without their strong guidance", it becomes much harder to do that convincingly when we can all see them behaving like toddlers in public.
mandeepj
His boss called someone "Newscum". Birds of a feather flock together.
ggavin
For whatever reason, Newsom's gotten many colorful nicknames from his critics. It was one of the funnier parts of moving to California. At one point I maintained a list of any I heard but it appears to be lost. Newssolini, Gruesome Newsom, Any Twosome Newsom, Gavin Gruesome, Governor Gaslight...
Hikikomori
Such a child
hn_throwaway_99
On one hand, I used to look at these super successful people with a pretty heavy dose of envy. Now I honestly don't, because I find their behavior reprehensible and disgusting, and just so childishly stupid. Granted, I'm fortunate enough that I really don't want for material goods (that's also because I realized I don't need very much), so I might feel differently if I had to slave away at some job I hated.
Being a "nerd" who graduated HS in the 90s has been a weird arc. At first you got out and were like "yes! I survived HS", and then for a while you had skills that were valued, and now it feels like the whole world has devolved into a shitty sequel to Mean Girls.
mvdtnz
Both of them.
tqi
I absolutely hate how much CEOs acting like children / influencers has become the norm. Maybe they were always like this, and twitter has just given us a window into it, but I for one would wholeheartedly welcome a return to "respectability" norms for business and civic leaders.
Xcelerate
The name-calling in public discourse wears on me. Ad-hominems, bad faith arguments. I’ve gotten to where I avoid the news altogether because of this seemingly accelerating trend.
m_fayer
I think the grass roots of the tech world has some portion of the blame here. The introduction of hoodies, flip-flops, open drama and bickering, and kicker into the office environment is not unrelated. And it’s not just CEOs, we’ve now got a senator who looks like the guy I bought pot from as a kid. I never thought I’d make this argument, but maybe at least appearing respectable increases the odds that you’ll actually be a little respectable.
ks2048
It's a very minor thing in the face of the idiotic insanity going around, but I just saw and was annoyed by Altman's twitter bio: "AI is cool i guess".
Is this like some kind of ironic detachment? It almost makes you long for corporate pablum about building a world for us all.
archagon
That would require the death of social media.
Aperocky
Why would he offer a swindler and a scam almost $100B?
e40
We live in wild times, where billionaires share pathetic quips on social media. Like they are 12 and on a playground.
Havoc
Musk borrowing from Trump's playbook...childish nicknames
null
PyWoody
https://xcancel.com/sama/status/1889059531625464090, for those of us without an account.
josefresco
FYI X has relaxed the login prompt (at least for me). You can again see the post without an account, but not the thread.
timcobb
I like not even going there
JohnFen
It doesn't matter. I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.
42lux
Good that we are talking about a thread of messages here.
Fnoord
My firewall blocks all IPs belonging to Twitter ASN. Have to use Tor Browser.
knowitnone
no, thank you
jaggs
Nope, not interested.
steve_adams_86
I don't like petty internet arguments, I can't help appreciate him referring to it as Twitter.
latentcall
I only call it Twitter because I’m not gonna say “X” it just sounds stupid.
steve_adams_86
It's like the ship of Theseus for me. If all of the parts are swapped out, is it the same ship? I don't know, that's interesting to think about. But if all of the parts are essentially the same but worse for wear, with a shittier captain, is it the same ship? Yes, it's still Twitter.
al_borland
It seems like everyone calling it x.com would allow people to use the name without having to know the history or be confused by just calling something X.
Kind of how pets.com was always called pets.com, because just calling something "pets" would be confusing.
ddingus
Yes, and I think of the "X Window System" often when "X" is mentioned, doh!
zozbot234
You could split the difference and call it Xitter.
grogenaut
I always called it OSTEN for the same reason
polotics
i say "the X website" and I find it very funny
stronglikedan
[flagged]
catapart
setting aside the understanding of hypocrisy as entirely negative, deadnaming is bad because it can allow for unwanted tracking/attention, and because it might be offensive/hurtful for the person you are calling a name that they do not use.
neither of those issues apply for companies. unless you've relentlessly refrained from calling McDonald's "mickey D's" (or any other company, any name other than their company name) specifically because you "might offend them" (they have a "preferred" name, that's why they put it everywhere), then you're not applying the rule universally. and if you worry that using "twitter" in place of "x" would somehow allow for stalking of the company that the real name would prevent, I would love to see any rational justification for that concern.
rules - of morality or otherwise - are reasonable to follow only when they have some net benefit. even by the low standards of an edgelord trying to apply rules where they would be ironic, this fails the test of even applying the rules correctly.
Volundr
Companies aren't people.
teg4n_
You must be a supreme court justice if you can’t tell the difference between a company and a person!
sofixa
Musk deadnames his own child, I think it's fine to not be considerate to him.
davidcbc
He should probably take that twitter deal, probably not getting better than that
emrah
Can Sam reply on his own? Does he have controlling votes?
null
SketchySeaBeast
Brave of him to be posting that on Xitter.
TheAlchemist
"The bid is being backed by Musk's AI company xAI, which could merge with OpenAI following a deal, according to the Wall Street Journal which first reported Musk's offer earlier on Monday."
xAI is not making any money - it's a money furnace, so what does it mean the bid is backed by xAI ? The leverage and 'creativity' in the US is off the charts. Dotcom bubble starts to look reasonable.
rozap
If they merge two money furnaces, then they can make up for the losses with the higher volume :)
JKCalhoun
I guess just like First CityWide Change Bank.
adharmad
Indeed. When two black hole merge, the resulting blackhole has larger mass and size.
berbec
I they cut costs enough, they can make money without selling a product.
bilbo0s
This is an underrated comment.
And the key point in this news that punctuates the ridiculous farce that is the nature of this offer.
notatoad
as i underestand it, xAI is essentially Elon's personal piggybank, and how he funnels money from his other companies back to himself. Tesla is public and Twitter is co-owned by a whole bunch of other billionaires, but xAI is just Elon.
manquer
Twitter owns some shares in xAI . This has made the value of twitter debt improve from 55-60 cents to as high as 90 cents on the dollar according to some reports.
While other factors may be involved, that debt is shopped around assuming there are bankable assets in that DC and GPUs which are quite valuable even if the either company goes sideways.
golergka
> Dotcom bubble starts to look reasonable.
Given what happened to the internet afterwards, dotcom bubble was always reasonable. There were a lot of idiotic companies that made no sense, but the overall idea that internet is going to generate tons of value and money was completely true.
averageRoyalty
With first mover advantage disappearing for OpenAI and very good alternatives appearing, one wonders how long they can sustain a multi billion dollar per year loss[0].
The launch of ChatGPT was earth shaking, but what have they done since that impacts or excites the average consumer? Does their revenue even come from the average consumer, or primarily from API users that will lift and shift to a viable competitor?
I don't know, but I'm very curious to see how they can hold their lead and be attractive in the longer term.
0. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/27/openai-sees-5-billion-loss-t...
typs
ChatGPT is an extremely successful consumer product. Looking at Search traffic alone indicates they clearly have large brand value. Usage doesn't just depend on just benchmarks for most consumers.
minimaxir
There's large brand value, and then there's $300B brand value.
Without a moat, it's hard to argue OpenAI's value is that high.
rvnx
You can choose as an investor between:
a) Coca-Cola (~$300B, profitable, stable, stock-listed, well-known addictive brand, accepted business model with steady growth)
b) OpenAI (bleeding cash: $5B lost last year, tech that is not really novel anymore, weird corporate setup, competition that offers similar products).
It's not that easy to support the idea that OpenAI will be the winner.
zozbot234
OpenAI's real moat is all in their know-how about developing LLM architectures and training them. That stuff can be expected to be very hard to replicate, no matter how hard anyone tries. The best case for OpenAI is actually if the DeepSeek R1 improvements are genuine, and OpenAI can adopt them to make their upcoming models even more capable than they would be otherwise.
moralestapia
[flagged]
xnx
> indicates they clearly have large brand value
BlackBerry, Nokia, Yahoo, and MySpace were popular at one point but couldn't keep up.
SergeAx
Yahoo is still website number 7 or 8 in the US.
boringg
How much of that community would jump ship on change of ownership? Not that Altman is any better than Musk but Musk has certainly created a more negative publicity about himself recently and thus more distrust or people of certain political stripes unwilling to use his products (scientific community probably leans that direction).
gkoberger
I've soured on Altman, but he's MUCH better than Musk. It's not even a competition.
insane_dreamer
As more advanced AI features get bundled into apps that users are already using like Google Search, FB, etc. there will be less incentive to have a separate ChatGPT subscription (even if it's slightly better, it won't matter to most people).
rvba
The one bundled to google search is so poor quality that it is degrading google experience...
rchaud
Conversions to paid users us only 5-6% though
https://beta.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/company-news/2024/10/2...
andyferris
Does that number matter?
What’s the conversion rate on any single typical ad hosted by Google? Yet it all adds up to make a lot of money, for Google and (presumably) the advertisers.
gosub100
they just need to find some laws to break or some poor people to exploit so they can be like other big SV startups.
null
mrtksn
Don't you think that the brand is huge though? It has become a household name and it's synonymous with artificial intelligence. They're also supposed to get grotesque amount of investments which is supposedly more than twice the value of what Musk offered(They have %40 stake in the project Stargate, which is supposedly $500B thing).
ceejayoz
> Don't you think that the brand is huge though?
The world is littered with old once-great brands.
giarc
Intel would like a word.
philistine
You talk numbers, so let me ask you a numbers question: at their current valuation, if the brand is 60% of the value that’s top 5 estimated brand value.
Is OpenAI really one of the five most valuable brands in the world?
robotresearcher
How did you choose 60% as the brand value ratio?
mouse_
It got mentioned in the new york times and South Park a handful of times. How many billions is that worth if your technology is obsolete, your prospects are poor, your employees are taking the piss in interviews...?
jarsin
> your employees are taking the piss in interviews...?
What does that mean?
stevage
Yep. I use ChatGPT a lot, so much so that each day there is some point where it switches from version 4 to version 3. I don't even notice a difference.
lucasfdacunha
I don't think you guys understand the reach of chatGPT. I live in Brazil and I was in line at a restaurant when I saw an older lady (around 60~70 years old) chatting with chatGPT on her smartphone. That's when I realized that chatGPT burst the bubble and by a lot.
We in the tech bubble know all the competitors and all the other products related to AI, but I guarantee that 98% of the rest of the world just knows chatGPT and some of them use it, even people who struggle to turn the Bluetooth on/off.
It's really hard to replicate this, I'm pretty sure this lady will never have the Claude or DeepSeek app installed on her phone, but she will be using chatGPT in the meantime.
dyauspitr
From the first release? A lot. It is much much smarter and multi modal.
sofixa
According to this analysis from a few months back: https://www.wheresyoured.at/oai-business/
OpenAI are kind of fundamentally unsustainable as a business.
serjester
If someone has 0 understanding of what an embedding model is used for, I seriously question their ability to predict winners and loser in AI.
> OpenAI has a "text embeddings" API that is used primarily for tasks where you want to identify anomalies or relationships in text, or classify stuff in text"
typs
This is the modern version of 2010's "Amazon makes no money in retail"
zoogeny
But isn't it the case that the cash cow for Amazon is actually AWS? That is, without AWS would we consider Amazon to be the success we see it as today?
null
orwin
I see your overall point, i think it is the wrong comp. It compare more to SAP or Atlassian.
VWWHFSfQ
My understanding is that they sold a large chunk of the business to Microsoft in exchange for nearly unlimited Azure credits
senordevnyc
Before I read this 32-minute long article, who is Edward Zitron and why should I care about his opinion or analysis?
blah2244
Zitron is a blogger whose content/internet personality is centered around being anti-Big Tech, and very much falls in the "AI is dumb/useless and will die any day now".
He's a good writer, but his content is written through an extreme anti-AI lens, so take it with a pretty big grain of salt.
tmnvdb
From scrolling though his articles he is a guy who likes to write polemic articles declaring companies dead
minimaxir
Ed Zitron has written many newsletters chronicling the business economics of OpenAI/other AI companies and their incentives.
They're the most comprehensive writeups in that aspect, although not as technically-oriented as most content on HN.
sofixa
It would have been easier to Google him, or ask Claude/Mistral to write you a summary of his article.
I hadn't heard of the author before that article, but all the math and logic in it is sound. There is some guesswork on exact numbers (because OpenAI don't publish that sort of information) you can disagree with, but IMO it's fairly generous in their favour. And it still looks pretty bad for their financial prospects.
Layvier
> "It's time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was," Musk said in the press release. "We will make sure that happens.""
From the creator of Grok, this is such an insane thing to say
darknavi
And Tesla, who (in)famously doesn't regularly publish their GPL-derived codebases.
chairhairair
What’s the background here? How can we know they use GPL licensed code? Was there some leak?
cyberax
Their infotaiment uses a customized Debian distro. On a Model S you could easily get a shell into it, because they used a freaking SSH with a password-based authentication over Ethernet to connect from the instrument cluster to the computer in the central console.
You could sniff the password with a man-in-the-middle attack, if you knew the host key of the instrument cluster. Here's one from my previous Model S: https://gist.github.com/Cyberax/ad9866ab4306d43957dc480db573...
TZubiri
source?
hn_throwaway_99
None of these people have any shame anymore, it's just exponentially growing levels of unwarranted chutzpah.
Jcampuzano2
This is modern day tech ceo/politician playbook 101. And it's because of this that society in general is a shit hole. There is no semblance of honesty nor accountability at all anymore.
Grift and lie to everyone's faces because you know that it doesn't matter what the fuck you say, as long as your political stance aligns with the right people bootlickers will lick up anything you say for a chance at being noticed.
OccamsMirror
You need rabid fans though to make sure your doubters are yelled down. That's one way Musk gets away with this behavior. Thousands of dimwits yelling down anyone that suggests he may not be operating in good faith.
Layvier
How many of them are even real though? I'm pretty sure Musk has a troll farm for a long time now, back in twitter days his supporters' profiles already looked very suspicious
sghiassy
Could you add more context? I’m unfamiliar with Grok. Is Elon being a hypocrite?
Layvier
Grok has absolutely no safety mecanism in place, you can use it for anything it will not block a query, all under the pretext of "free speech". And it's not open source either
sunaookami
>it will not block a query
This is good though?
>And it's not open source either
Wonder why Grok-1 is open-source but not Grok-2. Maybe it will when Grok-3 releases?
chrisco255
Grok-1 was open-sourced. Grok-2 has yet to be open sourced, but perhaps they will once they launch Grok-3.
smrtinsert
Didn't X have to ban Grok output due to what their own users were making?
chrisco255
No, it's live and free for all X users.
pcj-github
The one thing Musk does not have in his drive for total world domination is AI.
Don't let him get it. Profoundly dangerous.
Watch as he attempts to use the levers of the now illegitimate US government to force the outcome.
chrisco255
If you don't think Tesla is an AI company, you're not paying attention. xAI is also owned by him.
Meanwhile, OpenAI was cofounded by him.
Is there some reason OpenAI, which has maneuvered for regulatory capture of the AI industry in the past, is less dangerous than whatever you perceive?
FFRefresh
He already owns xAI, valued at $45B+.
disqard
Correct, though my perception is that it's a distant Nth-place player behind ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, etc.
chrisco255
Grok 2 is already better than Claude 3.5, at least for programming tasks, in my experience.
wyre
My instinct says he wants OpenAI so he can turn ChatGPT into another propaganda machine like he did with Twitter.
whamlastxmas
It’s pretty wild to try to claim twitter wasn’t a propaganda machine before musk
stiltzkin
[dead]
WiSaGaN
I think this is a negotiation tactic that aims to eventually block OpenAI's transition to for-profit.
graeme
And at least at the stated valuation. They've valued it at $40 billion but if they decline larger offers it is hard to sustain the low valuation.
freitasm
Unless it ends up like the Twitter situation and he is forced to put the money up.
gsibble
I wholeheartedly agree
pavelstoev
poison pill offer ?
I_am_tiberius
It's also another great view into Musk's character.
chrisco255
The whole OpenAI debacle is a cluster. Clearly OpenAI should have been founded as a for-profit corp from the beginning. If it had, then folks like Musk that put up $100M to help found it wouldn't have been shuttered out of whatever deal is going on to transform it into a for-profit.
ChrisArchitect
Reuters link: https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/elon-musk-led-group-ma... (https://archive.ph/qFkQY)
nilespotter
[flagged]
mmastrac
typs
Notably a steep discount from their recent raise at a 157B. The board would never approve.
ipnon
Yes, seems like a PR stunt to discount OpenAI.
ummonk
It's the opposite - it's a PR stunt to try to keep Sam Altman from discounting OpenAI even further and selling it to himself at a laughably low price.
entropicdrifter
Hardly Musk's first attempt at blatant market manipulation. Hell, that was how he got stuck holding the bag with Twitter
whamlastxmas
What market is openai trading on?
tombert
And in trouble with the SEC by claiming someone he was going to take Tesla private.
tmnvdb
Isn't this Musk offer just for the nonprofit part, i.e. not a comparable number?
typs
Well the nonprofit theoretically controls the for-profit, so the argument would be that the subsidiary for profit is somehow worth more than its parent? It’s a complicated legal structure but I don’t think that could be true.
aeternum
IMO this offer is exactly to prove that point.
Sam, if the non-profit is worth $40B then clearly you would be willing to sell it for $80B.
That's pretty strong evidence that the non-profit isn't worth just 40B and thus the basis of the go-private is invalid.
fairity
Sorry, I know this is technically against community guidelines, but how in the world is this submission not anywhere on the top 5 pages of hacker news? Seems extremely suspicious.
I_am_tiberius
I wonder that as well. I'm pretty sure there's manual manipulation involved sometimes.
tptacek
There's always manual manipulation. In the early days of the site, the saying was "without manual manipulation, the front page would be nothing but cat pictures". Today, it's clear that it would be nothing but Musk stories.
I_am_tiberius
Thinking about it, I consider it possible that pg is afraid of the Trump administration. He rightfully called David Sacks names for his actions in the Parker Conrad case. It might be subjective, but I believe that since the election, his language on his Twitter feed has changed significantly as well. I believe he wants no further conflict - the paypal mafia has too much power to harm him now.
dadrian
pg has not moderated Hacker News, nor been operationally involved in YC, for over a decade.
tptacek
This has been something like 80% of all the moderator commentary on HN for the past week, it has a totally predictable explanation that is in line with a decade of HN moderation practice, and the question itself is (and always has been) off-topic. It's not "technically" against the guidelines; it's flatly against them. Take questions about moderation to email: hn@ycombinator.com.
derwiki
I was thinking the same thing. I submitted the link only to find this thread.
icelancer
It's near the top now - just saw it this way. Weird though.
mintplant
Might have tripped the flame-war detector? It goes off when there's a high comment-to-vote ratio.
JohnKemeny
I came here via the front page, and with 200 comments and over 200 points, how do you think people found this submission?
some-guy
I didn't see it anywhere, I had to search "OpenAI" and sort by date to see any discussion. And then one of those discussions linked to this one, which didn't appear in the search.
sunaookami
Same, with 700 comments. It's currently on #37.
watoc
I had to search for it
srid
These kinds of controversial submissions do end up appearing in https://hckrnews.com/
talldayo
It's taking quite a journey on and off the frontpage: https://hnrankings.info/43004889/
I'm surprised too, as this is extremely pertinent to Y-Combinator and the community at-large. Seems like something that would be stuck #1 spot for a few hours but that's up to the community to decide. Maybe we're all moving on from the OpenAI hype thing.
It feels like Musk is single-handedly making a great case for why unlimited accumulation of wealth is a bad idea.
It's pretty colorful language, but my mind immediately jumps to "financial terrorist". He's using his enormous amount of wealth and influence as a weapon to bludgeon anyone and anything in his way.