Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg discussed potential financing of OpenAI takeover bid

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Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/TSLA]) and xAI, had approached Meta (NASDAQ:META [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/META]) CEO Mark Zuckerberg to join a $97.4B takeover bid of OpenAI earlier this year, a court filing showed.

Musk had discussed the letter of intent with Zuckerberg, including "potential financing arrangements or investments," OpenAI disclosed in the filing. Neither Zuckerberg nor Meta (NASDAQ:META [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/META]) signed the LOI.

The ChatGPT maker noted Meta's (NASDAQ:META [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/META]) heavy spending on its own AI capabilities, including offering pay packages of $100M or more to top AI researchers and attempting to poach OpenAI employees.

OpenAI's counsel filed [https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.433688/gov.uscourts.cand.433688.230.0_1.pdf] to subpoena Meta (META [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/META]) for all communications between the company, Zuckerberg and Musk regarding the takeover bid.

Meta (META [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/META]) argued that OpenAI's requests in its subpoena are vague and "unduly burdensome." It added that the relevant communications may be sought from Musk and xAI through party discovery.

The filing is part of Musk's ongoing lawsuit against OpenAI over the Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/MSFT])-backed AI startup's plan for converting its for-profit arm into a public benefit corporation.

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