Elon Musk asked Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to get involved in the xAI CEO’s bid for OpenAI, court filings from Thursday showed.
OpenAI states in the filing that Musk had spoken with Zuckerberg about his letter of intent to buy OpenAI, more specifically asking the Meta CEO “about potential financing arrangements or investments.”
It added that neither Zuckerberg nor his company signed the letter of intent.
Back in February, a group of investors led by Musk made a bid to buy the nonprofit controlling OpenAI for $97.4 billion.
“OpenAI is not for sale,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in response to Axios during the AI Action Summit in Paris. “OpenAI’s mission is not for sale — to say nothing of the fact that a competitor who is not able to beat us in the market and you know, instead is just trying to say, ‘I’m gonna buy this’ with total disregard for the mission is a likely path there.”
OpenAI is asking the court to order Meta to produce documents that it says is “relevant to [its] defenses,” including “responsive communications” or “reflecting discussions or coordination” Meta has had with Musk. Plus, it’s requesting “documents and communications related to any actual or contemplated bid to acquire OpenAI or any of its assets,” which include Meta’s discussions with other bidders and internal communication.
In its statement, OpenAI said it served Meta with a subpoena on June 18, after which Meta served responses and objections on July 2. The AI startup said it “conferred on four occasions” with Meta about its response.
OpenAI said its request from the court is aligned with the court’s July 9 order that discovery related to Musk’s bid and the letter of intent “is relevant to phase 1 issues…because Musk’s bid may be inconsistent with Plaintiffs’ phase 1 theories of liability.”
Meta said in the filing that the court should reject OpenAI’s request because it said the AI startup should obtain the documents it wants “directly from plaintiffs” — which is Musk — “rather than imposing that burden on non-party Meta.” It added that any documents OpenAI wants that “plaintiffs do not have” are “not relevant.”
Regarding OpenAI’s request for internal communications, Meta said “it is difficult to see how any communications by any Meta employee are at all relevant.”
OpenAI said in the filing that “Meta’s objections are meritless.”
— Britney Nguyen contributed to this article.
