Should Open Philanthropy Make an Offer to Buy OpenAI?

post by mrtreasure · 2025-02-14T23:18:01.929Z · LW · GW · No comments

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Update: seems like earlier today the OpenAI Board rejected Musk's proposal and said OpenAI is "not for sale." 

Epistemic status: thought about it briefly; seems like a longshot that's probably not worth it but curious what people think of the possibility. 

You might have heard Sam Altman is trying to transition OpenAI to a for-profit company and has offered $40 billion to the nonprofit as compensation, despite fundraising rounds suggesting its valuation is already much higher, perhaps around $100 billion. The logic seems to be that this will allow OpenAI to scale faster as it prepares for larger and larger training runs. Elon Musk has offered $97.4 billion. Altman said "no thanks." The primary purpose of this offer may be to drive up the price and delay the sale. It would be a huge amount of money to top either of those numbers. OP would need to build a coalition, and that kind of money is probably better spent elsewhere even if you care only about making AI go well. 

But would a second offer further cement the idea that the nonprofit is being low-balled, and would that be good? And are there arguments or worlds that it would make sense to follow through and buy OpenAI?

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