Emergency pod: Elon tries to crash OpenAI’s party (with Rose Chan Loui)

By 80000_Hours @ 2025-02-14T16:29 (+21)

We just published an interview: Emergency pod: Elon tries to crash OpenAI's party (with Rose Chan Loui). Listen on Spotify, watch on Youtube, or click through for other audio options, the transcript, and related links.

Episode summary

I think most people think it’s a game of chess for him, that this makes them come up to that $100 billion level so that if they succeed, it won’t be on the cheap.

As for where the money’s coming from, I think he might throw the question back at OpenAI: “Where are you going to get the money?” Because remember, they’re madly raising money to do the AGI development. And so far in their blog post, they only mention stock as the compensation — stock in the new for-profit.

— Rose Chan Loui

On Monday, February 10, Elon Musk made the OpenAI nonprofit foundation an offer they want to refuse, but might have trouble doing so: $97.4 billion for its stake in the for-profit company, plus the freedom to stick with its current charitable mission.

For a normal company takeover bid, this would already be spicy. But OpenAI’s unique structure — a nonprofit foundation controlling a for-profit corporation — turns the gambit into an audacious attack on the plan OpenAI announced in December to free itself from nonprofit oversight.

As today’s guest Rose Chan Loui — founding executive director of UCLA Law’s Lowell Milken Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofits — explains, OpenAI’s nonprofit board now faces a challenging choice.

The nonprofit has a legal duty to pursue its charitable mission of ensuring that AI benefits all of humanity to the best of its ability. And if Musk’s bid would better accomplish that mission than the for-profit’s proposal — that the nonprofit give up control of the company and change its charitable purpose to the vague and barely related “pursue charitable initiatives in sectors such as health care, education, and science” — then it’s not clear the California or Delaware Attorneys General will, or should, approve the deal.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quickly tweeted “no thank you” — but that was probably a legal slipup, as he’s not meant to be involved in such a decision, which has to be made by the nonprofit board ‘at arm’s length’ from the for-profit company Sam himself runs.

The board could raise any number of objections: maybe Musk doesn’t have the money, or the purchase would be blocked on antitrust grounds, seeing as Musk owns another AI company (xAI), or Musk might insist on incompetent board appointments that would interfere with the nonprofit foundation pursuing any goal.

But as Rose and Rob lay out, it’s not clear any of those things is actually true.

In this emergency podcast recorded soon after Elon’s offer, Rose and Rob also cover:

Why OpenAI wants to change its charitable purpose and whether that’s legally permissible
On what basis the attorneys general will decide OpenAI’s fate
The challenges in valuing the nonprofit’s “priceless” position of control
Whether Musk’s offer will force OpenAI to up their own bid, and whether they could raise the money
If other tech giants might now jump in with competing offers
How politics could influence the attorneys general reviewing the deal
What Rose thinks should actually happen to protect the public interest

Video editing: Simon Monsour
Audio engineering: Ben Cordell, Milo McGuire, Simon Monsour, and Dominic Armstrong
Transcriptions: Katy Moore