OpenAI mulled acquiring wafer-scale chip designer Cerebras back in 2017.
Emails released as part of an ongoing lawsuit by Elon Musk revealed that the plan would have seen the ChatGPT-maker partner with Tesla to do the deal.
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In an email to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Musk, Ilya Sutskever, one of OpenAI’s co-founders and then-chief scientist, said: "In the event we decide to buy Cerebras, my strong sense is that it’ll be done through Tesla."
It is not clear how far along the discussions were, but an earlier email from Sutskever mentioned an agenda that included: "Negotiate merger terms with Cerebras” and “More due diligence with Cerebras.”
At the time, with mounting costs, the non-profit was debating how to fund a rapid compute build-out to rival Google. Backed in part by Musk, it considered becoming an arm of Tesla, similar to how British AI lab DeepMind joined the search giant.
Ultimately, however, it signed a deal with Microsoft to use its cloud service and give the company increasing control over OpenAI's research. It has since mostly dropped its non-profit roots, in favor of an increasingly profit-driven structure.
Musk sued the company over the change, while launching his own for-profit business xAI.
The deal to acquire Cerebras appears not to have gone anywhere. The chip company is now preparing for an IPO and has signed a major deal with G42.
OpenAI, meanwhile, at one point considered raising trillions to fund new chip fabs and architectures. Now, however, it is thought to be partnering with Broadcom on a more modest custom chip, likely manufactured by TSMC, for 2026.
