Saudi Minister Meets with CEO of Amazon Cloud AWS to Strengthen Strategic Partnership

The Saudi Minister of Communications and Information Technology met with the CEO of Amazon AWS Cloud. SPA
The Saudi Minister of Communications and Information Technology met with the CEO of Amazon AWS Cloud. SPA
TT

Saudi Minister Meets with CEO of Amazon Cloud AWS to Strengthen Strategic Partnership

The Saudi Minister of Communications and Information Technology met with the CEO of Amazon AWS Cloud. SPA
The Saudi Minister of Communications and Information Technology met with the CEO of Amazon AWS Cloud. SPA

Saudi Minister of Communications and Information Technology Eng. Abdullah bin Amer Al-Sawaha has met with the CEO of Amazon AWS Cloud, Matt Garman, and a number of the company’s senior leaders to strengthen the strategic partnership between the two sides.

The meeting took place during Al-Sawaha’s visit to the US, the Saudi Press Agency reported Tuesday.

The two sides discussed the company’s investments in high-capacity cloud areas, focusing on ways to support the growth of the digital economy in the Kingdom and the whole region.

Such meetings are part of ongoing efforts to enhance the digital infrastructure in the Kingdom and provide more investment and technological opportunities that contribute to driving the development of the digital economy and innovation in the region.



Musk Says He’ll Withdraw $97.4 Billion Bid for OpenAI If ChatGPT Maker Remains Nonprofit

The OpenAI logo is seen in front of an Elon Musk photo in this illustration taken March 11, 2024. (Reuters)
The OpenAI logo is seen in front of an Elon Musk photo in this illustration taken March 11, 2024. (Reuters)
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Musk Says He’ll Withdraw $97.4 Billion Bid for OpenAI If ChatGPT Maker Remains Nonprofit

The OpenAI logo is seen in front of an Elon Musk photo in this illustration taken March 11, 2024. (Reuters)
The OpenAI logo is seen in front of an Elon Musk photo in this illustration taken March 11, 2024. (Reuters)

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 the nonprofit’s controlling stake in the for-profit OpenAI subsidiary. The purpose, they said, would be to 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. The chair of OpenAI's board, Bret Taylor, echoed those remarks at an event Wednesday.

Musk and Altman helped start OpenAI in 2015 and later competed over who should lead it before Musk resigned from the board in 2018. They've been in a long-running and bitter feud over the startup.

Musk again criticized Altman's management on Thursday during a videocall to the World Governments Summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, describing it as akin to a nonprofit aimed at saving the Amazon rainforest becoming a “lumber company that chops down the trees.”

Altman has repeatedly countered that Musk's legal challenges to OpenAI are motivated by his role as a competitor.

Musk has asked a California federal judge to block OpenAI's for-profit conversion on allegations ranging from breach of contract to antitrust violations. The judge has expressed skepticism about some of Musk's arguments but hasn't yet issued a ruling.