Musk Tried to Enlist Zuckerberg to Help Finance OpenAI Bid

Elon Musk tried to enlist Mark Zuckerberg for his unsolicited bid to buy OpenAI this year for almost $100 billion, the startup said in a court filing.

OpenAI said Musk identified Zuckerberg, the chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., as one of the people with whom he had communicated about potentially financing a deal to purchase the ChatGPT maker. Bloomberg News AI Reporter Rachel Metz joins Bloomberg Businessweek Daily to discuss Musk's OpenAI bid, Apple's potential Google AI partnership, and the US government's stake in Intel.

Neither Zuckerberg nor Meta signed the letter of intent or participated in the $97.4 billion bid, OpenAI said in the filing. OpenAI’s board formally rejected Musk’s bid in February.

Musk worked with Sam Altman to found OpenAI a decade ago before going on to launch a rival startup, xAI. He has been locked in a legal skirmish with OpenAI, repeatedly trying to derail the startup’s plans to restructure as a more conventional for-profit business. The billionaire filed two lawsuits against OpenAI for allegedly straying from its founding principles and asked a court to block the company’s restructuring efforts.

Evidence that Musk was quietly trying to persuade one of OpenAI’s chief rivals to help him acquire the startup could undercut the billionaire’s legal claims that Altman’s partnership with Microsoft Corp. betrayed the OpenAI’s charity mission. The judge overseeing the legal battle previously has written that “efforts by Musk to incorporate OpenAI into Tesla or to convert it into a for-profit company are relevant because they may be inconsistent” with his claims against Altman and OpenAI.

OpenAI asked in the filing Thursday for the judge to order Meta to turn over documentation related to any communication the tech company had with Musk.

In a letter Friday, Musk’s lawyer argued to the judge that OpenAI should be barred from getting information from Meta about the February bid. It should also be barred from gathering other material from third parties related to its claim that Musk is waging a harassment campaign to damage Altman’s startup and boost xAI, the lawyer said.

Musk’s attorney also said OpenAI has already signaled that it wants to question three other parties who signed the February letter of intent to purchase the startup.

At the time, Musk enlisted a group of wealthy allies for a cash bid to buy the nonprofit’s assets. Backers of the proposal included Valor Equity Partners, Baron Capital, Atreides Management, Vy Capital, Joe Lonsdale’s 8VC and Ari Emanuel, through his investment fund.

Musk said he hoped to return OpenAI to being “the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was.”

Meta also urged the court to deny OpenAI’s request, saying, “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 added.

Meta declined to comment. OpenAI declined to comment beyond its court filing.

US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California, has scheduled a trial for March.

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