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by 93po 25 days ago
worse than that is the $60 million sale price, which was comically and absurdly low. Elon himself said he was willing to buy it for significantly more than that and the fact that it wasn't able to go to the highest bidder just shows that it was bullshit
2 comments
granzymes 25 days ago
Elon's purchase offer was in 2025, after the success of ChatGPT showed that OpenAI's IP (much if not most of it developed after 2019) could be commercially valuable. I think it is also debatable whether Elon's purchase offer was in good faith.

It was not clear in 2019 that OpenAI's IP would ultimately be worth billions. That was well before the current AI boom.

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tyre 25 days ago
Wait, no, not at all. A non-profit shouldn’t have to take the highest bidder regardless. The whole _point_ of a non-profit is to act beyond purely short-term financial gains.

“Elon buying this doesn’t align with the mission” is a completely normal, reasonable, and healthy response for most non-profits.

What’s great is that we don’t need to speculate about a counter factual. He did end up building a chatbot! Whose defining differentiating feature is revenge porn.

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93po 21 days ago
A non-profit should act in its own individual best interest. If I had a non-profit for sheltering animals and one contractor told me it would cost a million dollars to build a new shelter, and another contractor, conveniently largely owned and controlled by me, said the same shelter would cost $20 million, don't you think there's a problem if you go with the $20 million option? I imagine this scenario is highly illegal.
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achierius 25 days ago
But the decision is still subject to heavy scrutiny; in fact, more than with normal for profit corporations. It does not seem like the board acted in the best interests of the nonprofit here, they acted in their own.
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senordevnyc 24 days ago
How did the board personally benefit?
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93po 21 days ago
How much did people on the board benefit from OpenAI going for-profit? Either directly by owning shares of the new for-profit, or knowing they eventually would, or by business connections to the new for-profit entity? I imagine most or all of them.
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senordevnyc 21 days ago
Ah, so you have no idea.
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