This is tied to Musk’s ongoing lawsuit against OpenAI, in which he accuses the company of abandoning its founding mission.

Court filings made public on Thursday show that OpenAI subpoenaed Meta in June, demanding records related to discussions of Musk’s unsolicited bid. 

According to OpenAI’s lawyers, evidence reveals Musk and Zuckerberg exchanged messages regarding financing or investment support for the deal through Musk’s AI venture, xAI. OpenAI rejected the offer earlier this year.

Meta resisted the subpoena in July and has now asked the court to block OpenAI’s request, arguing that Musk and xAI themselves should supply any relevant documents. 

A Meta spokesperson pointed to OpenAI’s own filing, which stated that neither Meta nor Zuckerberg signed Musk’s letter of intent to acquire the company. Meta has declined further comment.

The issue traces back to OpenAI’s restructuring into a public benefit corporation, a change Musk insists breaches the company’s original non-profit mission. 

OpenAI, however, says the move is necessary to raise funding and preserve its influence in the industry. The court has already rejected Musk’s call for an injunction against the restructuring, ruling that he had not demonstrated sufficient grounds for success.

Behind the case is an increasingly fierce rivalry in the artificial intelligence sector. Meta, which has been struggling to keep pace with OpenAI and Anthropic, has poured billions into its AI ambitions. 

In 2025 alone, the company invested $14 billion in Scale AI and launched Meta Superintelligence Labs to build systems aimed at surpassing human intelligence.

The company has also aggressively recruited talent from its competitors. In mid-2025, at least eight senior researchers left OpenAI for Meta, including Shengjia Zhao, a co-creator of ChatGPT now heading Meta Superintelligence Labs. 

Others such as Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai joined from OpenAI’s Zurich office, all previously linked with Google DeepMind. Reports show Zuckerberg has offered compensation packages exceeding $100 million to lure top AI scientists.

Meta’s goal, however, has faced setbacks. Its flagship models underperformed earlier this year, forcing Zuckerberg to personally intervene with a new strategy. 

Court documents from a separate case revealed that Meta executives were fixated on building a system stronger than OpenAI’s GPT-4 but fell short of that goal.

The intersection of Musk and Zuckerberg recalls their history of public clashes, including Musk’s challenge to a cage fight that never materialised. The filings suggest the two billionaires may have set differences aside in pursuit of a common aim: challenging OpenAI’s dominance.

OpenAI has accused Musk of mounting “a relentless harassment campaign” designed to disrupt its operations and strengthen xAI’s position. 

The case results from a copyright lawsuit filed by The New York Times, which accuses OpenAI and Microsoft of using millions of its articles to train ChatGPT without authorisation. 

The court, in response, ordered OpenAI to preserve and isolate all user outputs generated by ChatGPT, potentially including deleted or expired conversations.

On 3 June, OpenAI formally asked U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein to reverse the preservation order issued in May, describing the demand as excessive and damaging to user trust. OpenAI maintains that complying with such a tough data retention requirement clashes with industry norms and existing user agreements.

“This fundamentally conflicts with the privacy commitments we have made to our users. It abandons long-standing privacy norms and weakens privacy protections,” said Brad Lightcap, chief operating officer at OpenAI.

OpenAI currently allows users, particularly those using ChatGPT Free, Plus, Pro, and Team accounts, to delete chats, which are then scheduled for permanent removal from its servers within 30 days. 

The same rules apply to API users unless they are operating under Zero Data Retention agreements, where no data is logged or retained at all.

The Times, however, has pushed for indefinite data storage, contending that user interactions with ChatGPT could potentially expose copyrighted material that was improperly reproduced. OpenAI rejects this approach, calling it speculative and harmful.

“We will fight any demand that compromises our users’ privacy; this is a core principle,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in a post on X. “We think this was an inappropriate request that sets a bad precedent.”

The court’s preservation order also includes deleted data, which OpenAI says it would normally purge under its standard policy. To comply, the company has had to establish a separate, secure legal hold system, accessible only to a limited and audited legal and security team.

Importantly, OpenAI clarified that data stored under this legal hold is not automatically shared with The New York Times or any other party. Any future attempt to access the data would be met with legal resistance.

Users on ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Edu, and API customers using Zero Data Retention endpoints are unaffected by the order.

So far, the court has only partially narrowed the scope of the data order. During a hearing in late May, it was confirmed that ChatGPT Enterprise data is exempt. OpenAI continues to appeal, hoping the broader directive will be overturned.

The lawsuit, filed in 2023, accuses OpenAI and Microsoft of copyright infringement. Judge Stein, in an earlier opinion, stated that The New York Times had shown credible evidence that the two companies could be liable for encouraging users to replicate protected content through the chatbot. 

He noted multiple examples of ChatGPT reproducing portions of Times articles without attribution or licensing.

OpenAI, while not denying that outputs occasionally resemble public content, insists that these occurrences are exceptions, not deliberate reproductions. They argue that complying with the court’s order would force them to betray the very users whose trust they rely on to maintain their platform.

There is currently no end date or review period for the preservation order. For now, OpenAI is bound by the court’s mandate but says it is doing everything possible to limit the long-term impact on its users.

This unexpected move by Elon Musk follows his public opposition to the new collaboration between OpenAI and Apple, indicating a well-thought-out strategy in his approach to the AI industry.

Filed in February, Musk’s lawsuit accused OpenAI of breach of contract and fiduciary duty, alleging that the company had strayed from its original mission of developing artificial general intelligence (AGI) for the benefit of humanity. 

Elon Musk argued that OpenAI had instead transformed into a for-profit entity dominated by Microsoft, its principal shareholder. Legal experts, however, viewed Musk’s case as tenuous, noting that the alleged “Founding Agreement” was not a formal contract but rather a collection of understandings communicated through emails.

Musk’s decision to drop the suit, which was dismissed without prejudice, allows him the option to refile it in the future. 

This development coincides with his recent statements threatening to ban Apple devices from his companies if Apple integrates OpenAI’s technology at the operating system level.

The backdrop to this legal drama is Musk’s own AI venture, xAI, which he founded last year as a direct competitor to OpenAI. xAI recently secured a $6 billion Series B funding round, attracting investment from major firms like Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, and Fidelity Management & Research Company. 

The company aims to “understand the true nature of the universe,” according to its mission statement, and has already launched Grok, a chatbot inspired by “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”