The nearly $100 billion put on the table by Elon Musk and a group of investors close to the magnate to acquire OpenAI go beyond the typical move made by the magnate to gain exposure and drive the agenda. The CEO of Tesla seeks to present an alternative future for the creator of ChatGPT, which is in a process of transformation from its origins as a non-profit company to its future as a mega-corporation that will still require huge amounts of money to operate.
A future that concerns many of the world's wealthiest individuals, major venture capital players, and the most powerful nations. In recent weeks, there have been dozens of leaks about the current state of OpenAI. All point to the same conclusion: it will continue to need a lot of money to operate. The company tripled its paying users last year to nearly 15.5 million and aimed to end the year with revenues of $4 billion and losses of $5 billion.
If in the early stages of the company the focus was on research and positioning itself at the forefront of AI, the current focus is on taking the next step to, on one hand, secure enough resources to reach artificial general intelligence (AGI) and, on the other hand, accelerate the business machinery.
In this aspect, one of the key players who will have a voice in this conflict is Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. Although a few weeks ago, he and Altman were photographed together and the founder of OpenAI announced that "the best of the alliance between both was about to come," tensions between the two companies are evident.
Microsoft has been launching its own models for some time and recruiting talent to strengthen its own offering, an offering that competes with ChatGPT. Both companies offer virtually the same product to the same market. The tech giant has benefited from its extensive sales network to take the lead over OpenAI in the enterprise business, but the future for Altman's team is to level this market, as most individuals use their free version.
The issue is even more complicated because Microsoft invested over $11 billion in the company and currently has the right to 49% of the company's profits (not its shares).
This is where the figure that took the longest to play a leading role in this story (almost against his own nature) comes into play. Masayoshi Son, the eccentric CEO of SoftBank, known for his impulsive investments during the startup boom and the WeWork disaster, is willing to commit an immense investment of up to $25 billion to scare off both Musk and Microsoft and raise the group's valuation to $300 billion in a round that would total an injection of $40 billion for the creators of ChatGPT, already the sixth most visited website in the world, very close to Instagram.
In the funding round, other investors entered, among which Nvidia stands out, knowing that OpenAI is one of its best partners, so it is expected that they will closely monitor the company's evolution. The scrutiny from the company led by Jen-Hsun Huang will be even greater considering that one of Altman's grand projects is to design their own processing units (GPUs) to become less dependent on the company that has benefited the most from artificial intelligence promises so far.
This complex map of interests is destined to involve numerous economic forces, as there is obviously a large cohort of investment funds that have been investing in the company in recent years and will surely want to position themselves for the future. A future where some like Softbank already envision an IPO. This would be challenging in the coming years, as OpenAI's management would be satisfied with having split the private company and the foundation by 2026.
However, the already vaguely defined roadmap is subject to two enormous asterisks. The biggest one is the current President of the United States, Donald Trump, and the complex network of influences that tech companies have woven around him. Depending on who is close to him at a crucial moment and can find the right argument, a decision could tip the balance. For example, if OpenAI is blocked by this power struggle and DeepSeek or another opaque Chinese company overshadows its advances, Trump would likely make a move to speed things up.
On the opposite side are the competition authorities. In the United States, they have become practically ineffective due to Trump's mandate to end the aggressive trend of the previous Administration and focus on a "pro-business" approach. In Europe, it's a different story, and institutions like the UK Competition Authority have already opened investigations with the initial agreement with Microsoft, so it would not be surprising to see new developments in that case or an increase in scrutiny of the activities carried out by OpenAI.