MICROSOFT'S WOULD-HAVE-BEEN $30B "HACKQUISITION" OF OPENAI

Summary from the TLDR newsletter

Microsoft's 'hackquisition' of Inflection in 2024 was groundbreaking and led basically all of its rivals to copy the same general structure. Microsoft first conceived the plan when Sam Altman was ousted as CEO in November 2023. It had planned to hire the entire company if OpenAI refused to reinstate Altman. Altman was quickly reinstated, but the situation clearly planted the seed that would grow into the 'hackquisition' model.