OpenAI has claimed in a court filing that Elon Musk tried to enlist Mark Zuckerberg in his $97 billion bid to take over ChatGPT maker. The company stated that Musk had identified the Meta CEO as someone with whom he had discussed the possibility of financing the takeover bid.
OpenAI is now asking Meta, via its lawyers, to produce any evidence of coordination with Musk and his startup xAI regarding the acquisition or investment of the company. This request was made in a public brief filed on Thursday in response to Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI.
OpenAI’s lawyers had requested a subpoena in July and are now asking for a court order to obtain this evidence. OpenAI has also asked the court for any documents or communications from Meta related to“any actual or potential restructuring or recapitalization of OpenAI”, as per TechCrunch.
Meta has reportedly asked the court to reject this request, stating (via 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
OpenAI and Elon Musk notably have a long-term history, with Musk being one of the company’s founders until he severed ties with it in 2018. After the public rollout of ChatGPT in late 2022, Musk began a renewed attack on OpenAI and filed two lawsuits against the AI startup, alleging that it had strayed from its founding principles of developing AI for the benefit of humanity in favour of a profit-seeking motive.
Meanwhile, Musk and Zuckerberg are not known to be on the best of terms either. In fact, the pair frequently engaged in banter on social media after Meta launched its X alternative app, Threads. Things came to a head between the two billionaires when Musk challenged Zuckerberg to a cage fight, a challenge which the Meta CEO accepted, but the idea of an actual match fizzled out in the intervening months.
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