According to new court filings, Musk attempted to acquire OpenAI for $97.6 billion, seeking investment from none other than Mark Zuckerberg.
According to Business Insider, the plan fell apart when neither Zuckerberg nor Meta signed on, and Musk soon left OpenAI’s board to launch his rival company, xAI.
OpenAI now wants Meta to disclose any communications with Musk or xAI as part of the ongoing legal feud between the two companies.
Musk, who co-founded OpenAI, has since sued the company twice, accusing it of abandoning its original nonprofit mission.
The $97.6 billion figure underscores just how high the stakes are in the race to dominate artificial intelligence—and how determined Musk was to take charge.
Meanwhile, Meta is escalating the AI arms race with its own high-priced play: offering top AI researchers pay packages as large as $100 million.
The company is actively poaching from rival labs, including OpenAI, in a bid to beef up its own large language model efforts.
High-profile hires in recent months include former GitHub chief Nat Friedman, Scale AI’s ex-CEO Alexandr Wang, and several former OpenAI researchers.
Do you think this corporate chess game will accelerate innovation or create dangerous monopolies? Let us know in the comments below!