ChatGPT maker says Elon Musk turned to Mark Zuckerberg for help financing $97 billion OpenAI bid
OpenAI has claimed in a court filing that Elon Musk tried to enlist Mark Zuckerberg in his $97 billion bid to takeover ChatGPT maker. The company stated that Musk had identified Meta CEO as one of the people with whom he had communicated about potentially financing the takeover bid.
OpenAI via its lawyers is now asking for Meta to produce any evidence related to coordination with Musk and his startup xAI related to acquiring or investing in the company. The request was made by the ChatGPT maker in a public brief filed on Thursday in Musk’s lawsuit against it.
The lawyers for OpenAI had requested for a subponea in July and are now asking for a court order to obtain this evidence. OpenAI has also asked the court for any of Meta’s documents and communications related to
Meta objected to OpenAI’s initial subpoena in July; the ChatGPT-maker’s lawyers are now seeking a court order to obtain such evidence. OpenAI is also asking the court for any of Meta’s documents and communications related to “any actual or potential restructuring or recapitalization of OpenAI”, as per TechCrunch.
Meta reportedly asked the court to turn down this request, stating (as per Bloomberg), “Meta’s documents can hold no evidence of ‘coordination’ with Musk, or of Meta’s purported attempt to purchase OpenAI, or of any other relevant information when Meta did not join Musk’s bid.”
“Meta’s communications (if any) with entities that did join the bid also hold little to no relevance, and in any event, should be sought from those entities, not Meta, which did not participate,” the company further added
Notably, OpenAI and Elon Musk have a long term history with the billionaire being among one of the founders of the company till he cut ties with it in 2018. Musk then began a renewed attack on OpenAI after the public rollout of ChatGPT in late 2022 and then went to file two lawsuits against the AI startup alleging that it has strayed away from its founding principles of developing AI for the benefit of humanity in favour of profit seeking motive.
Meanwhile, Musk and Zuckerberg aren’t known to be on the best of terms either. In fact, the duo frequently engaged in a banter on social media after Meta had launched its X alternative app called Threads. Things came to a boiling point between the two billionaires when Musk challenged Zuckerberg for a cage fight match, a challenge which the Meta CEO accepted as well but the idea of actual match frizzled out in the intervening months.
