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

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.

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.