On the evening of February 3, 2025, Mark Zuckerberg sent Elon Musk a message praising the work of DOGE, the federal cost-cutting initiative Musk was running for the Trump administration. "Looks like DOGE is making progress," Zuckerberg wrote. "Let me know if there is anything else I can do to help."
Less than thirty minutes later, Musk replied. He sent a heart emoji, and then typed a question: "Are you open to the idea of bidding on the OpenAI IP with me and some others?"
Zuckerberg wrote back: "Want to discuss live?" Musk said he would call in the morning.
Those messages, unsealed from court filings connected to Musk's ongoing lawsuit against OpenAI, represent one of the more extraordinary texts in recent Silicon Valley history. Two men who had spent two years publicly feuding, one of whom was also leading a legal campaign framed as a crusade to protect artificial intelligence from corporate greed, were texting each other late at night about buying the company at the center of that crusade.
The Text Exchange, Word for Word
The messages date to February 3, 2025, months after Musk filed his lawsuit against OpenAI, and months after he had already publicly positioned himself as a defender of OpenAI's original nonprofit mission to develop AI for the benefit of humanity.
In the lawsuit, Musk alleges that OpenAI and its co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman deceived him when they invited him to co-found the lab in 2015, promising it would remain a nonprofit forever. Musk says he contributed approximately $38 million in early funding based on those assurances.
He is seeking up to $134 billion in damages.
The text exchange, reviewed from court documents published by Business Insider and Fortune, shows a different dimension to Musk's involvement. According to the unsealed exhibit, Zuckerberg messaged Musk at 10:04 PM Pacific time, mentioning DOGE's progress and offering his help. Musk reacted with a heart and asked if Zuckerberg would join the OpenAI bid. Zuckerberg offered a phone call.
Musk's legal team argued the communications should be excluded from the litigation, calling them "tangential and prejudicial" to his OpenAI claims. The court did not exclude them.
According to an OpenAI court filing from August 2025, neither Zuckerberg nor Meta signed a letter of intent. Meta cited its heavy ongoing investment in its own AI capabilities and recruitment as the reason for declining. The texts reveal the discussion went only as far as a proposed phone call.
Seven Days Later, the Bid Arrived
On February 10, 2025, one week after the Zuckerberg text exchange, a consortium led by Musk's xAI submitted an unsolicited offer to acquire OpenAI. The bid: $97.4 billion. It was submitted by attorney Marc Toberoff and aimed explicitly at blocking OpenAI's conversion from nonprofit to for-profit structure.
Altman dismissed it on X the same day: "no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want."
OpenAI completed its nonprofit-to-for-profit conversion in October 2025, months after the bid was rejected.
The juxtaposition between Musk's lawsuit (which argues that OpenAI's commercialization betrays the mission he funded) and his private attempt to acquire the company's intellectual property is the kind of detail that trial lawyers spend years hoping to put in front of a jury. Musk's team built a legal case around principle: that nonprofit promises were sacred, that AI should not be commodified. The unsealed documents add a layer to that narrative that Altman's defense team will certainly use.
Microsoft Could Owe the Jury a Larger Number
The damages calculations in this case grew significantly in the weeks before trial. On March 25, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers approved expert testimony from damages witness Paul Wazzan, who is expected to argue that Microsoft could owe Musk up to $25 billion for its role in OpenAI's transformation.
Microsoft has been one of OpenAI's most critical backers, committing billions in cloud infrastructure and computing access in exchange for a significant revenue share of OpenAI's commercial products. Musk's lawsuit alleges that Microsoft's financial entanglement accelerated OpenAI's drift from its nonprofit origins. The judge's decision to allow Wazzan's testimony means the damages figure the jury will hear extends well beyond Musk's own investments. It implicates one of the largest technology companies in the world.
An article published earlier this month on Let's Data Science covered the full background of the lawsuit in depth: Musk Sued OpenAI for $134 Billion. The Jury Decides in 34 Days.
The Microsoft angle is particularly sensitive given publicly leaked investor documents that revealed OpenAI had warned its own investors about the risks posed by its Microsoft partnership. OpenAI Told Its Investors Microsoft Could Sink the Business. That Was Never Supposed to Go Public.
What OpenAI's Defense Will Argue
Altman's team has a few angles available. First, they can argue the texts prove nothing about Musk's motives, that wanting to acquire OpenAI and wanting to preserve its nonprofit mission are not mutually exclusive. Musk might argue he was trying to buy OpenAI precisely to restore its original purpose.
Second, the defense will note that Zuckerberg never agreed to anything. Meta signed no letter of intent. The texts show a conversation that went nowhere.
Third, and perhaps most damaging to Musk's core claims, OpenAI will likely argue that the acquisition bid demonstrates he understood the company had substantial commercial value. If Musk believed OpenAI had no legitimate for-profit future, why submit a nearly $97.4 billion unsolicited offer to buy it? The bid itself may be used to undercut the argument that Musk's concerns were purely idealistic.
How the Case Got Here
The Trial Begins April 27
Jury selection in Musk v. Altman is scheduled to begin April 27 in Oakland's U.S. District Court, in front of Judge Gonzalez Rogers.
The case carries stakes well beyond any single verdict. It is the first time a court will examine whether a major AI laboratory made binding promises about its corporate structure in its early days, and whether those promises can be enforced by someone who funded the lab before walking away.
The unsealed texts ensure that the jury will also be examining something more personal: the private negotiations, the late-night messages, and the gap between what Silicon Valley's most powerful figures say publicly and what they discuss in private. That gap, it turns out, can be very large.
Sources
- 2 years after Musk challenged Zuckerberg to a cage match, they were texting about DOGE and a joint OpenAI bid, court records reveal, Fortune, March 31, 2026
- Musk pitched Zuckerberg on his unsolicited bid for OpenAI's IP, newly unsealed court documents show, Business Insider via Yahoo News, March 2026
- Judge Lets Expert Testify Microsoft Could Owe Musk $25B Over OpenAI Partnership, WinBuzzer, March 26, 2026
- Court Filings Show Warmer Musk-Zuckerberg Ties In Early 2025, Dataconomy, March 30, 2026
- Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI will face a jury in March, TechCrunch, January 8, 2026
- Musk, OpenAI lawyers trade barbs as lawsuit heads to trial, CNBC, January 8, 2026