Welcome to the TechMeBright Home for Tuesday, February 11th, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough today.

Elon makes an unsolicited bid to buy Open AI, or at least the nonprofit that controls it,

and maybe he doesn't really want to own it. It's complicated. I'll explain. YouTube continues to be

the biggest thing in media. Forget smartwatches,

get ready for smart earbuds, and the crazy cheap Chinese ebys can now do crazy cheap self-driving, too.

Here's what you miss today in the world of tech.

Yeah, so I definitely jinxed things yesterday when I read that Times article about Sam outfoxing Elon,

because late yesterday, investors led by Elon Musk made an unsolicited $97.4 billion bid

to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI, complicating Sam Altman's plans to convert to a for-profit entity.

Quoting the journal,

Musk's lawyer Mark Toberoff said he submitted a bid for all the non-profits assets to OpenAIs

Board of Directors Monday. It's time for OpenAI to return to the open source safety focus force

for good it once was, Musk said in a statement provided by Toborov, we will make sure that happens, end

quote. Altman quickly rejected the offer on X. He wrote, no thank you, but we will buy Twitter

for $9.74 billion if you want, using the previous name for the Musk-owned social media

platform, and moving the decimal point in the billionaire's

bid for OpenAI, one space to the left. In a Slack message to employees, Altman wrote,

Our structure ensures that no individual can take control of OpenAI. These are tactics to try

and weaken us because we are making great progress. The bid is being backed by Musk's artificial intelligence company

XAI, which could merge with OpenAI following a deal. He also has several investors backing him,

including Valor Equity Partners, Barron Capital, a treaties management, ViCapital, and 8VC,

a venture firm led by Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale. Ari Emanuel, CEO of Hollywood

...