This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
He can afford to pay twice the price of Twitter because he's using government money. Remember he barely swung the 44 billion for Twitter. Now he's buying something for more than double that? After putting code into the Treasury department computers to hide transactions?
Lmao.
He bought Twitter for 44 billion... and the US presidency for 290 million.
That is the single most dystopian shit I have ever heard. The idea that people and countries are so dirt cheap and companies are orders of magnitude more valuable is a thing that should damn their souls to hell.
You how bad this is affecting me? I've been an atheist and anti-death penality most of my life... Musk has for the past while made me think that the death penalty needs to be applied to people like him (and Israeli war criminals) and not to common crooks and common murderers. He is even making me want a hell to exist so people like him can burn in it.
Is he going to buy a “founder” clause in the contract?
How to become a millionaire: Start with 97.4 Billion.
even if openai are assholes, chatgpt is still useful for things as long as you dont put too much trust in it. If that fucker buys it they will turn it into racist shitspewing garbage. Without it, regular people will have no decent or easy way to utilize ai and this new tech will benefit only the rich who will use it to oppress us even worse.
Stinky isnt an idiot, i wish he was. Anything he buys he can and will use to cause harm to us. So this would be bad for us all.
Regular users can use Gemini, Deepseek, Meta AI, and there will probably be many more services in the future.
deepseek has censorship which makes it unreliable. But hopefully someone will fix that since its opensource. So at least there is that. google is garbage in comparison to chatgpt and i havent tried anything meta has produced since i dont want to have anything to do with that filth, so i dont know anything about that one. So maybe there is some hope in long term, if things dont get worse elsewhere.
Deepseek only has censorship on their hosted site... if you run the open source model on your own hardware it doesn't seem to censor
Oh, I forgot about Claude. Last time I tried it, it seemed on par or even better that ChatGPT-4o (but was missing features like browsing).
Deepseek took the training of foundation models from a billionaire's game to a millionaire's game. If Elon wants an AI monopoly, it'll have to be done through litigation. Which, ya know, they're also trying.
In order to ruin it like Twitter?
YES!
Finally a way to destroy the AI hype.
Maybe the man is good for something besides wasting oxygen after all.
Lol does he even have the money/stocks/bank friends to buy at that price?
This kind of thing is why it's short-sighted even for the other tech guys to cozy up to Trump. There's no room for anyone other than Musk and he is just going to use his leverage with Trump to screw over the other billionaires as well.
Anyone cozying up to Trump is announcing they have skeletons in their closet and he has the dirt.
Where is the "hide Musk/DOGE/Trump related posts" button ?
EDIT : Found it ! (Damn, Lemmy is awesome 😊)
Bro, I think you just wiped out your entire front page.
They're also hiding their head in the sand, which might be a bigger issue.
When it's actual news, I'll hear about it regardless.
I'm not going to perseverate over every headline, I have a life to live. The media is actively trying to piss us off, they'll skew and distort and all but fabricate to keep us angry and engaged.
I'm not doing it. I can't recall a single time in my life that keeping up to date up to the hour has actually improved anything for me. Sitting around just knowing stuff is happening isn't going to change my life for the better.
I live in a safe republican state and a leans Republican district. I could send a letter to my senator, call my representative, spend hours of my time just worried about something, and still, they'll vote how the party wants them to. Being informed and doing the things I'm supposed to do won't change anything.
But being good to your neighbors and doing direct action like volunteering will make a huge difference, and you don't need the news for that!
There are two sides two this. There's yours, and then there is self-care and self-protection. Being constantly bombarded with this shit, these issues, problems and the world going down hill while you as an individual can't even begin to influence or have any kind of impact on them can and will wreck your mental health.
In the end it needs balance. Don't stick your head in the sand, but also don't drown in the never ending despair that is the flood of bad news in modern media.
I'm still reading the old school press and listening to the radio. I'm just not on lemmy to read about it AGAIN... On top of that, it's mostly absurd and inaplicable announcements. They crave attention so much, it's painful to listen. Look at Musk's video gaming scheme. Just pathetic...
Not sure FlyingSquid is aware of life outside Lemmy. They’re addicted to the lotus flowers here.
Yeah, I’m pretty much done with Lemmy right now. It’s just getting way too much. The sky is falling every five minutes.
Elon’s $97.4B hostile takeover bid for OpenAI is less about “safety” and more about a billionaire’s corporate tantrum. The offer reeks of desperation—a laughable lowball for a company valued at $340B, dressed as altruism.
Altman’s clapback—“buy Twitter for $9.74B”—is the perfect middle finger to Musk’s flailing empire. Remember when X became a $44B dumpster fire? Now he wants to drag OpenAI into his orbit of mismanaged toys.
This feud isn’t about AI ethics—it’s two tech oligarchs weaponizing legal battles and PR stunts. Musk’s “open-source” crusade is safety theater while his own xAI hoards code. The only winner here? Lawyers billing hourly as the world burns.
To be clear (and as far as I understand), it’s not a hostile takeover bid because it cannot be: OpenAI is not a public company and thus doesn’t have a fiduciary duty to thousands to millions of shareholders but instead to a handful of big investors who can decide for themselves whether they want that Elon’s money or not. So this isn’t similar to what Twitter had been through but more like Elon teasing Altman I believe.
The distinction you’re making is valid but misses the forest for the trees. Whether OpenAI is public or not, Musk’s bid is a textbook power play, not a genuine offer. The lack of fiduciary duty doesn’t erase the intent—it amplifies it. This isn’t about shareholder obligations; it’s about Musk leveraging his wealth to reshape AI governance in his image.
Comparing this to Altman’s jab at Twitter isn’t apples-to-apples. Altman’s point was rhetorical, highlighting Musk’s track record of overpromising and underdelivering. The “open-source” crusade Musk touts is hollow when xAI remains proprietary.
This isn’t about legality or structure—it’s about influence and control. Dressing it up as altruism insults anyone paying attention.
I read this on Hacker News, which I found particularly interesting:
Elon Musk’s bid for OpenAI isn’t about buying it but about disrupting its transition to a for-profit company. OpenAI Inc., the nonprofit, controls OpenAI LP, the capped-profit subsidiary. To convert to a full for-profit entity, OpenAI Inc. must sell its technology and IP to the new company, with regulators determining a fair valuation.
The rumored SoftBank investment at a $260B valuation relies on this transition, but the current estimated valuation is around $150B. Typically, control premiums in such deals range from 20-30%, putting the expected nonprofit payout at $30B-$40B. However, Musk’s $97B bid for OpenAI Inc.’s assets sets a significantly higher valuation, giving regulators a strong argument that the nonprofit should receive much more.
If regulators adopt Musk’s benchmark, OpenAI Inc. would end up with a 62% majority stake, making the transition far more complex or even blocking it entirely. Even though OpenAI won’t accept Musk’s offer, the bid’s primary effect is to make the legal and financial process of going for-profit much more difficult. It’s a strategic move designed to frustrate OpenAI’s leadership, particularly Sam Altman, and potentially derail the entire transition.
The Hacker News post you referenced aligns with the broader narrative: Musk’s bid isn’t about acquiring OpenAI but about obstructing its for-profit transition. By setting a high valuation benchmark, he’s complicating regulatory approval and forcing a reassessment of the nonprofit’s stake. This isn’t altruism; it’s a calculated disruption aimed at frustrating Altman and OpenAI’s leadership.
The bid also underscores Musk’s ongoing feud with Altman, weaponizing financial maneuvers to challenge OpenAI’s trajectory. It’s less about AI ethics or governance and more about power plays and ego clashes.
While the restructuring may benefit the nonprofit financially in theory, Musk’s interference highlights how these transitions often prioritize control over mission. Dressing this up as concern for AI governance is disingenuous—it’s a chess match between tech oligarchs, with humanity as the board.
OpenAI is not a public company and thus doesn’t have a fiduciary duty
Public companies only have fiduciary duty to their sharehoders to the extent that their corporate charters say that they do. It's entirely possible to launch a corporation that promises nothing to its shareholders, though it might be difficult to find investors.
Shortly after the news was announced, Altman posted on X: “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.”
If only their slapfight meant something good for the world. At least, I don't see everything collected in Musk's hands.
Lmao "Twitter"
Genius mastermind shadow president plan:
Ruin company A so it is worth 80% less
Ruin country USA so it is worth 80% less.
Unfortunately, looks like buying Twitter was a very effective choice if you take profit off the priority list
Buy a company mostly with other people's money (he paid ~15B of the 44B offer) lose a lot, 70% or more but use it to win an election and gain 200B in profit.
Musk is a salesman and he's good at getting investors to get behind his crap. He's never produced actual value but that doesn't matter to stock values apparently.
“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 his lawyer Marc Toberoff to The Wall Street Journal. “We will make sure that happens.”
I'll believe that when I see it.
lol. Wasn’t grok built specifically without safety in mind?
Musk: "Yeah safety as in: We must secure the safety of our people and a future for... "Real American" children."
not even one-third of the valuation openai thinks they're worth (up to 340b). and still below what investors thought in 2022 (157b). src
i think this is old spice admitting that xAI is total bullshit and he's giving up on making his own.
Open-source just turned its value to dog shit, I'd say the offer is far above its value.
With how twitters value has gone since he bought it, I'd say he is pretty bad at this
Ah so he's again going to pay twice the amount of what it's worth to then run of off a cliff and make it worth 20% of it's real value within a years time?
Seriously, why do people still believe anything this scammer says?
I mean, they believed everything Trump said because he was "a business man, not a politician" even though all he ever was was a failed business man. These people are functional at best - they ain't bright.
