Why are Elon Musk and Sam Altman engaged in a war of words over OpenAI?

Two of Silicon Valley's most prominent tech titans, Elon Musk and his former protégé Sam Altman, are in the middle of a very public feud over the future of OpenAI, the company behind the groundbreaking ChatGPT. Musk – the world's richest man and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX – has filed multiple lawsuits over the past year to stop Altman from restructuring OpenAI from a hybridised nonprofit into a for-profit company. Earlier this week, Musk raised the stakes by offering to buy the nonprofit for 97.4bn to preserve the original mission of the AI research lab – ensuring that "artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity". Musk's proposal was quickly rebuffed by Altman. In the latest development, Musk said through his lawyers on Wednesday that he would drop his offer if OpenAI remains a nonprofit, which would prevent the company from accessing potentially billions of dollars in funding.