Elon Musk Tapped Meta CEO Zuckerberg To Fund His $97B OpenAI Takeover Bid: Court Filing

The new information could have an impact on Musk's ongoing legal challenges to OpenAI's plan to restructure to a for-profit entity.

Elon Musk reached out to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to fund the Tesla founder's $97-billion bid to buy OpenAI, media reports stated late Thursday, citing court filings.

The new information could have an impact on Musk's ongoing legal case against OpenAI's plan to restructure to a for-profit entity.

Musk was one of the co-founders of OpenAI when it started as a research lab in 2015, but has sparred with co-founder and CEO Sam Altman in recent years over several issues, including artificial intelligence (AI) development, OpenAI's business relationship with Microsoft, and the AI startup’s restructuring plans.

More recently, Musk has thrust himself directly into the AI race with his company xAI. The firm's chatbot Grok, first integrated into the social media platform X, has since been rolled out as a standalone app.

According to the news on Thursday, OpenAI lawyers said they discovered Musk's communication with Zuckerberg, and they have subpoenaed Meta to turn over documents related to those conversations. Meta has objected to the subpoena, court documents showed.

Neither Meta nor Zuckerberg signed Musk's letter of intent to acquire the ChatGPT-maker.

It remains unclear to what level talks between Musk and Zuckerberg reached, and whether they happened altogether. In February, the OpenAI board had formally rejected Musk's all-cash takeover offer.

Meanwhile, Zuckerberg has doubled down on the social media company's AI effort by forming new teams, hiring top talent, and pushing new offerings, including the standalone Meta AI app.

On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment for Meta has stayed 'bearish,' unchanged for two weeks. Meta stock is up 26.3% year-to-date, compared to the 8.3% gains in the benchmark S&P 500 index.

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