ChatGPT co-founder hits back at Elon Musk after the billionaire insisted he'd purchase the company

A group of investors led by Elon Musk have submitted an unsolicited bid for ChatGPT which has been met with a sharp - albeit polite - response from the CEO of OpenAI.

On Monday, (February 10) Elon Musk's attorney, Marc Toberoff, confirmed a group of investors led by the Tesla CEO had submitted a bid for 'all assets' of artificial intelligence chatbot software ChatGPT, which is ran by OpenAI.

Musk and Sam Altman co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as a non-profit company and in 2019, Musk left the company with Altman becoming chief executive.

However, since OpenAI announced its plans to shift to become more of a 'for-profit corporation,' Musk has launched a bid to try and regain control of the company alongside a team of other investors.

Musk said in a statement on the day: "It's time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was. We will make sure that happens."

Musk's attorney Toberoff added: "As the co-founder of OpenAI and the most innovative and successful tech industry leader in history, Musk is the person best positioned to protect and grow OpenAI's technology."

Sam Altman is having none of it (Chris Jung/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

And Altman has since seemingly responded to Musk's bid, taking to Twitter yesterday to simply state: "No thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want."

The bid is being backed by xAI - Musk's own artificial intelligence company - alongside investors such as Valor Equity Partners and Baron Capital, The Wall Street Journal reports.

It comes off the back of Musk launching a series of legal complaints against OpenAI, accusing it of betraying the reason it was initially set up in 2015 in the first place as a non-profit to benefit all of humanity - claims branded as 'baseless' by an OpenAI spokesperson.

Toberoff added: "If Sam Altman and the present OpenAI, Inc. Board of Directors are intent on becoming a fully for-profit corporation, it is vital that the charity be fairly compensated for what its leadership is taking away from it: control over the most transformative technology of our time."

Sam Altman had a blunt response to Musk (Kenny Holston-Pool/Getty Images)

During the AI Summit in Paris, earlier this morning (February 11), Altman added to Sky News: "The board will decide what to do there [....], the mission is really important and we're totally focused on making sure we preserve that.

"The company is not for sale, neither is the mission."

UNILAD has contacted representatives for Elon Musk and Sam Altman for comment.