Elon Musk says he will abandon his $97.4 billion offer to buy the nonprofit behind OpenAI if the ChatGPT maker drops its plan to convert into a for-profit company.

�If OpenAI, Inc.�s Board is prepared to preserve the charity�s mission and stipulate to take the �for sale� sign off its assets by halting its conversion, Musk will withdraw the bid,� lawyers for the billionaire said in a filing to a California court on Wednesday.

�Otherwise, the charity must be compensated by what an arms-length buyer will pay for its assets.�

Musk and a group of investors made their offer earlier this week, in the latest twist to a dispute with the artificial intelligence company that he helped found a decade ago.

OpenAI is controlled by a nonprofit board bound to its original mission of safely building better-than-human AI for public benefit. Now a fast-growing business, it unveiled plans last year to formally change its corporate structure.

Musk and his own AI startup, xAI, and a consortium of investment firms want to acquire OpenAI so they can revert it back to its original charitable mission as a nonprofit research lab.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quickly rejected the unsolicited bid in a post on social media and told questioners at a Paris summit on AI that the company is not for sale.

Musk and Altman helped start OpenAI in 2015 and later competed over who should lead it. They’ve been in a long-running feud over the startup�s direction since Musk resigned from its board in 2018.

(AP)