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With the insane amount of money in the AI ecosystem right now, I think it's no shock or surprise that there's also an insane amount of business drama and the latest in this never ending saga. It feels like a finger pointing and lawsuits is actually happening between OpenAI and Meta. OpenAI's lawyers have started to question Meta's role in something that I think they felt a little threatened by. Earlier this year, Elon Musk made a bid for to buy OpenAI because of their fiduciary duty. He said that they, you know, had an obligation to sell for his price. There was a lot of drama. Sam Altman responded. Anyways, what's interesting today though is in all of the ongoing lawsuits between elon Musk and OpenAI, it seems that Meta may have actually been involved in that bid. OpenAI is suing their lawyers for more information to see if Zuckerberg was making a back channel deal with Elon Musk and all this. We're going to get into all the drama today. Before we did, I wanted to mention if you want to try any of the AI models that I talk about on the show, I talk about dozens. I mean, we have OpenAI, we have Grok, we have Llama that we're going to be talking about today. If you want to try any of those, I'd love for you to try my own startup, which is called AI Box AI and it's essentially a platform that allows you to access the top 40 AI models. We'll be adding tons more in the coming days. And essentially you can add access all of the top models on one platform for 20 bucks a month so you don't have to have subscriptions to every single platform. This is something I hope saves you a ton of money, but also lets you try all of the different models in one chat. You have text, you have a bunch of image ones and a bunch of audio models. So this is. There's a lot of really good stuff there if you want to check it out. I'll leave a link in the description. It's AI box AI. All right, let's get into what's going on with OpenAI. OpenAI right now they're asking Meta basically to produce evidence related to any sort of coordination that they were doing with Elon Musk and XAI when they did basically this bid to buy the company earlier this year. Elon Musk, I think this was back in February. He said, look, I will give you $97 billion, $97.4 billion to buy OpenAI. And at the time OpenAI, you know, this was an unsolicited offer, so OpenAI turned him down. Sam Altman said something on X, basically to the. Basically to the point that he was like, oh, you know, like, I don't want you. Like, you don't need to buy OpenAI, but I'll be happy to buy Twitter for $9 billion if you want. So, you know, he's kind of like, look, for a tenth of the price, I'll buy Twitter. And I think this is kind of because Twitter's valuation had been going down since the acquisition. In any case, I think that. I think that this is definitely kind of the start of all of this drama, and that's where a lot of people thought it ended. But apparently it goes a lot further because Meta may have been involved and OpenAI seems to think this is. This is a big issue. So OpenAI's lawyer said that they discovered that Elon Musk communicated with Meta about this purchase of ChatGPT and basically about, quote, potential financing arrangements or investments. So pretty much Elon Musk allegedly went over to Zuckerberg and was like, hey, let's get together. We could go buy OpenAI. We'll fund this thing, we'll put the money together and, I don't know, split it or whatever happens to it. And at the time, Meta was incredibly heavily invested in open source, so I imagine they'd probably try to be open source. They also stick the technology, I'm assuming, into Meta. Elon Musk had a lot of use cases with putting it into Grok and making his own chat model on his own social media platform. So I think that's kind of where he would have focused as well. Of course, his drama and beef with Sam Altman. I'm sure he would have been thrilled to kind of like, take over the company. So this did not happen. And what's interesting is OpenAI and asking Meta's lawyers about basically what's going on here. Meta objected to the initial subpoena that was submitted in July, and now OpenAI's lawyers are trying to get a court order to actually get any sort of evidence related to that. OpenAI's also asking the court for any of Meta's documents and communications related to, quote, unquote, any actual or potential restructuring or recapitalization of OpenAI. And of course, the core of this is Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI. So it's really interesting to see the drama here. It goes beyond Elon Musk, I guess a lot of people are jealous And I mean, you see a company grow as fast as OpenAI today with over 700 million weekly active users. Like, this is a absolute giant. A spokesperson for Meta, Andy Stone, basically said that OpenAI's filing, he kind of pointed to a part of OpenAI's filings which says that neither Meta or Zuckerberg signed Musk's letter or intent to acquire the chat like OpenAI. So he's, they're like, you know, give us all your documents on what you guys said about it. And he's like, look, Zuckerberg never actually signed any letters. So you guys have no evidence and you guys even admit that. But I mean, I think they want the juice, they want all the, they want the tea and all the juicy info about what Zuckerberg probably said in this. So Meta didn't say anything else other than that, other than saying Zuckerberg never signed anything. I think right now this is obviously coming in like, as the backdrop to this massive fight between Musk and Meta. Musk put a lot of money into this and Meta has significantly invested into all of their own AI models. In 2023, Meta executives were really obsessed about developing an AI model that could be OpenAI's GPT4. And so I think this is, you know, if they felt like it was slipping away, they're like, maybe we could buy it. And it seems like that's long gone because by, you know, early this year, Zuckerberg apparently is super frustrated that his model has fallen behind. And maybe he let it fall behind because he thought he was going to be able to buy it. I don't really know. But you've seen him going on a massive tear, spending billions of dollars. He's really up the pressure. He also poached a bunch of top OpenAI leading researchers. So he got Shenga Zhao, who's a co creator of ChatGPT, who now leads the research efforts at the new AI unit of Meta Superintelligence Labs. It's the research unit and Meta also invested about $14 billion in scale AI. They took the CEO over to lead, basically, Meta's overall AI model. So I think right now it is not very clear how far the talks between Musk and Zuckerberg were if this was, you know, just a partnership between them or if they were really trying to, you know, collude to shut down OpenAI. But two years ago, Musk said that he would, you know, physically fight Musk. Mark Zuckerberg in a cage match. This is after Mark Zuckerberg came out with threads which is competitor Twitter. The the Silicon Valley drama never ends. The cage match never actually happened. I think Elon Musk has a bunch of back problems. Anyways, Zuckerberg is actually a pretty lethal fighter, so I think that it's probably for the best. But in any case it's really interesting to see. I'll definitely keep you up to date on all of the drama if we find out how deep this collusion was. It seems like OpenAI was quite offended by all of it, so very interesting to see what goes on in this whole story. Anyways, thanks so much for tuning into the podcast today. If you enjoyed the episode, make sure to leave a rating and review. I read them all, I really appreciate them and basically it helps the podcast get shown to more incredible people like yourself. So thanks so much for tuning in. Make sure to check out AI Box AI if you want to try all the top models in the world in one place for 40 bucks a month and I will catch you in the next episode.
In this episode, Mark Cuban dissects the latest high-stakes drama in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, focusing on ongoing legal battles and alleged backchannel negotiations between industry giants—Elon Musk, OpenAI, and Meta (Facebook). The episode explores Musk's failed $97 billion bid to buy OpenAI, Sam Altman's witty responses, Meta's suspected involvement, and broader implications for the tech landscape. Cuban breaks down the key events, player motivations, and the rippling effects for AI innovation and corporate rivalries.
“You don't need to buy OpenAI, but I'll be happy to buy Twitter for $9 billion if you want.” – (04:10)
“Zuckerberg never actually signed any letters [of intent]. So you guys have no evidence and you guys even admit that.” – (08:20)
“Two years ago, Musk said that he would, you know, physically fight Mark Zuckerberg in a cage match... The Silicon Valley drama never ends.” – (13:45)
“It seems like OpenAI was quite offended by all of it, so very interesting to see what goes on in this whole story.” – (15:35)
| Timestamp | Quote | Speaker | |-----------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-----------------| | 04:10 | “You don't need to buy OpenAI, but I'll be happy to buy Twitter for $9 billion if you want.” | Sam Altman | | 06:40 | "[Musk] allegedly went over to Zuckerberg and was like, hey, let's get together. We could go buy OpenAI. We'll fund this thing, we'll put the money together and, I don't know, split it or whatever happens to it." | Mark Cuban | | 08:20 | “Zuckerberg never actually signed any letters [of intent]. So you guys have no evidence and you guys even admit that.” | Andy Stone (Meta) | | 13:45 | “Two years ago, Musk said that he would, you know, physically fight Mark Zuckerberg in a cage match... The Silicon Valley drama never ends.” | Mark Cuban | | 15:35 | “It seems like OpenAI was quite offended by all of it, so very interesting to see what goes on in this whole story.” | Mark Cuban |
Mark Cuban balances business savvy with entertainment, capturing the "tech soap opera" vibe of Silicon Valley’s biggest players. His informal, engaging delivery keeps the episode both insightful and lively, peppering sharp analysis with humor and memorable anecdotes.
This episode reveals just how intertwined, competitive, and sometimes secretive the AI industry has become—where multi-billion dollar bids, suspected behind-the-scenes alliances, and even literal fights for supremacy keep the Valley buzzing. Cuban promises continued updates as the story develops, keeping listeners ready for the next twist in AI's ongoing epic.