OpenAI lawyers question Meta’s role in Elon Musk’s $97B takeover bid 

OpenAI is asking Meta to supply proof associated to any coordinated plans with Elon Musk and xAI to accumulate or put money into the ChatGPT-maker.

The request was made public in a brief filed Thursday in Elon Musk’s ongoing lawsuit in opposition to OpenAI. Legal professionals representing OpenAI stated they subpoenaed Meta in June for paperwork associated to its potential involvement in Musk’s unsolicited, $97 billion bid to takeover the startup in February. It’s unclear from the submitting whether or not such paperwork exists. OpenAI in the end denied Musk’s bid.

OpenAI’s legal professionals say they found that Musk communicated with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg regarding xAI’s bid to buy the ChatGPT-maker, together with “about potential financing preparations or investments.”

Meta objected to OpenAI’s preliminary subpoena in July; the ChatGPT-maker’s legal professionals are actually searching for a courtroom order to acquire such proof. OpenAI can also be asking the courtroom for any of Meta’s paperwork and communications associated to “any precise or potential restructuring or recapitalization of OpenAI” — the core difficulty in Musk’s lawsuit in opposition to OpenAI.

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone directed TechCrunch in direction of a piece of OpenAI’s submitting which states that neither Meta nor Zuckerberg signed Musk’s letter of intent to accumulate the ChatGPT-maker.

Meta declined to remark additional. OpenAI and authorized counsel for Musk didn’t instantly reply to TechCrunch’s request for remark.

Within the background of OpenAI’s combat with Musk, Meta has considerably invested in its personal efforts to develop frontier AI fashions. In 2023, Meta executives obsessed over growing an AI mannequin that would beat OpenAI’s GPT-4, courtroom filings in one other case revealed. By early 2025, Meta’s AI fashions fell behind the trade customary, reportedly infuriating Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg has upped the strain in current months, poaching a number of of OpenAI’s main AI researchers, together with a co-creator of ChatGPT, Shengjia Zhao, who now leads analysis efforts on the firm’s latest AI unit, Meta Superintelligence Labs. Meta additionally invested $14 billion in Scale AI, and reportedly approached a number of different AI labs about acquisition offers.

Whereas it’s unclear how far talks developed between Musk and Zuckerberg, the mere concept of a partnership between the 2 billionaires represents simply how a lot of a menace OpenAI is. Two years in the past, Musk stated he would bodily combat Zuckerberg in a cage match (it by no means occurred although).

The rise of AI could have prompted Musk and Zuckerberg to put aside their variations.

The briefing disclosed Thursday is a component of a bigger lawsuit filed by Musk in opposition to OpenAI that takes difficulty with OpenAI’s conversion of its for-profit arm right into a public profit company. Such a conversion is important for OpenAI to acquire funding from traders, and finally go public. Nonetheless, Musk — a cofounder and early investor in OpenAI — has tried to throw a wrench within the endeavor, claiming that the restructuring goes in opposition to the startup’s founding mission.

Legal professionals representing Meta requested the courtroom to reject OpenAI’s request for proof, arguing that Musk and xAI can present any related data. Meta additionally argues that its inside discussions of OpenAI’s restructuring and recapitalization should not related to the case.

This story has been up to date so as to add extra details about the case, in addition to historical past of Musk and Zuckerberg’s relationship.