Musk Pitched Zuckerberg on Joint OpenAI Bid

Elon Musk approached Mark Zuckerberg in February 2025 with a proposition that his public messaging at the time gave no hint of: would the Meta CEO co-sign a bid for OpenAI's intellectual property?

The exchange, captured in newly unsealed court documents from the Musk v. Altman lawsuit, reveals that the offer came before Musk had gone public with his $97.4 billion unsolicited bid — and that the two tech executives had been in direct contact about it Business Insider. Zuckerberg texted back "Want to discuss live?" and Musk said he would call in the morning. Whether that call happened remains unclear from the filings.

The texts are part of a broader set of exhibits that Musk's lawyers have been fighting to keep out of trial, which tells you something about what they contain. Jury selection is scheduled to begin April 27, 2026 in Oakland, California Business Insider.

Here is the sequence as it appears in the unsealed documents: On February 3, 2025, at 10:04 PM PT, Zuckerberg reached out to Musk. "Looks like DOGE is making progress," he wrote. "I have got our teams on alert to take down content doxxing or threatening the people on your team" Business Insider Engadget. Musk responded with a heart emoji. Then he pivoted. "Are you open to the idea of bidding on the OpenAI IP with me and some others?" Business Insider.

Zuckerberg's reply was brief: "Want to discuss live?" Musk liked the message and texted back that he would call in the morning Business Insider.

Meta and Zuckerberg never signed the letter of intent. OpenAI noted in a court briefing that neither Meta nor its CEO was a party to the bid Business Insider. OpenAI has separately filed to subpoena Meta for communications between the company, Zuckerberg, and Musk about the bid CNBC. Meta has argued the request is overly burdensome and that any relevant documents should be sought from Musk and xAI directly, not from Meta Fortune.

The DOGE angle is worth sitting with. The text exchange shows Zuckerberg offering operational assistance to Musk's government cost-cutting operation — specifically, using Meta's content-moderation infrastructure to remove doxxing content targeting DOGE personnel — in the same conversation where Musk raised the OpenAI bid. Musk's team framing the texts as irrelevant to the lawsuit will be a harder sell than the legal posture suggests.

Musk's consortium submitted its $97.4 billion bid on February 10, 2025, roughly a week after the Zuckerberg exchange. The bid was submitted by Musk attorney Marc Toberoff Business Insider. OpenAI has since completed its conversion from nonprofit to for-profit structure, closing that chapter in October 2025 Business Insider. Musk is now seeking up to $134 billion in damages in the most recent version of his lawsuit against Altman and OpenAI Business Insider. He contributed approximately $38 million to OpenAI in its early years as a nonprofit Business Insider.

The unsealed texts add a layer of complexity to the narrative that Musk has presented publicly — that his campaign to reclaim OpenAI for humanity was a solo act, or at least one without the participation of the company's largest social media competitor. The DOGE component further muddies the picture: Zuckerberg's offer to use Meta's moderation tools to protect Musk's government operation sits uncomfortably alongside Meta's own ongoing content moderation debates.

What the documents do not show is whether Zuckerberg took the OpenAI proposition seriously or was simply being cordial. The texts end with Musk saying he would call — and no record of that call appears in the unsealed materials. Meta's position, in its court filing, is that there was no coordination with Musk and no participation in the bid Fortune.

The trial beginning April 27 will be the venue where this gets sorted out under oath. The texts are Exhibit 454-3. Musk's lawyers want them excluded. That tells you what they think of the evidence.