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Internal Tech Emails

@techemails.bsky.social
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Internal tech industry emails that surface in public records. 🔍 techemails.com

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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
[This document is from Musk v. Altman (2026).]
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Mira Murati
Go ahead

Sam Altman
what if msft acquires openai? would
that provide the governance the
board wants?

Sam Altman
is satya making progress at all

Mira Murati
Satya is being diplomaticSam Altman
will you emmett on with the team asap

Sam Altman
also does adam know you rehired me

Mira Murati
Yes
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Sam Altman
from a journalist:Mira Murati
Yeah

Mira Murati
Hoping Satya can help undo this

Sam Altman
should team send letter to board now?

Sam Altman
is he on with them?

Mira Murati
It won't matterMira Murati
They don't care if everyone quits

Sam Altman
is that what they want is the IP going to anthropic?

Sam Altman
that's what team thinks

Mira Murati
Just not your hand on agi

Sam Altman
i can not come back!Sam Altman
they were the ones that asked as of yesterday morning

Sam Altman
did satya get on call?

Mira Murati
Yes with him

Sam Altman
wait i have an interesting idea

Mira Murati
Still with Satya
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Sam Altman
can you ask why they've been a saying all weekend they wanted me back?

Mira Murati
They want new ceo in place

Sam Altman
can you say you will call back in 10 min

Mira Murati
They want to have a new ceo in place tonight (not me

Sam Altman
do they know who?Sam Altman
can i tell satya? is this final?

Sam Altman
or, should you add satya in?

Mira Murati
Trying to add Satya now

Sam Altman
still don't want me?

Mira Murati
New guy is rando twitch guyMira Murati
They don't want you

Sam Altman
emmett?

Mira Murati
Yeah

Mira Murati
But hold on I'm pulling Satya now

Sam Altman
okSam Altman
do you think any way you can turn this around? even if we let them sleep on it tonight or whatever?

Mira Murati
Have been trying
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Sam Altman texts Mira Murati November 19, 2023
Sam Altman
can you indicate directionally good or bad? satya and others anxious

Mira Murati
Directionally very bad

Sam Altman
ok

Sam Altman
can you wrap up soon? lots of pressure from msft for an update

Mira Murati
Sam this is very badSam Altman
can i come in?

Mira Murati
They don't want you to

Sam Altman
what do you want to make it better? i'm still willing to just walk away if that helps

Sam Altman
if they are ramped up for crazy lawsuits against me then i'm not sure whatSam Altman
can you please tell them i just want to resolve this however and would like to join

Mira Murati
They're convinced about their decision

Sam Altman
for me to be fired? or some new thing?

Mira Murati
Yes for you to be gone

Sam Altman
okSam Altman
then can i come in and talk about a path forward with them?

Mira Murati
They're saying no and they need more time

Sam Altman
more time for what?

Mira Murati
They've walked me through all the reasons and the issues with you and why you can't be ceo
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
[This document is from In Re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation (2026).]
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Mark Zuckerberg: "I just logged into Snapchat for the first time in a while" August 31, 2022
Mark Zuckerberg
Random thing. I just logged into Snapchat for the first time in a while to see what progress they're making with AR. What surprised me is how porny and inappropriate the content they're featuring is in their equivalent of Reels (Spotlight) and their 3P content stories (Stories). I was completely blown away that they haven't faced more scrutiny for this, especially given that their audience skews so much younger. It's not nudity but it's really raunchy. I would never let my kids anywhere near this. It seems like we could easily get more scrutiny on them for this, and perhaps that would help the next time we face scrutiny for youth content on our services.

David Ginsberg
yup - i haven't logged on in years, but will today. I'll have the team look at it.
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 29/03/2026
[This document is from Musk v. Altman (2026).]
070
Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 29/03/2026
Mark Zuckerberg texts Elon Musk December 13, 2024
Mark Zuckerberg
Quick heads up that Meta sent a letter to the California AG supporting your lawsuit against OpenAI. Someone (not us) leaked leaked the letter and it will be public in the next hour. Wanted to make sure you heard this from me.

Elon Musk
Ok

Mark Zuckerberg
I have an idea to run by you. Not urgent, but let me know if there's a good time to call in the next few days.
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
[This document is from Musk v. Altman (2026).]
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
Mark Zuckerberg texts Elon Musk February 3, 2025
Mark Zuckerberg
Looks like DOGE is making progress. I’ve got our teams on alert to take down content doxxing or threatening the people on your team. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help.

Elon Musk
[Reacted ❤️ to “Looks like DOGE is making progress. I’ve got our t…”]

Elon Musk
Are you open to the idea of bidding on the OpenAI IP with me and some others?

Mark Zuckerberg
Want to discuss live?
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 08/03/2026
[This document is from FTC v. Meta (2025).]
070
Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 08/03/2026
Mark Zuckerberg: "I wonder if we should consider buying Instagram" February 11, 2012
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
[This document is from Musk v. Altman (2026).]
060
Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
Sam Altman texts Elon Musk February 18, 2023
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 08/11/2025
[This document is from Musk v. Altman (2025).]
060
Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 08/11/2025
Sam Altman texts Shivon Zilis February 9, 2023
Sam Altman
BTW, good idea for me to tweet something nice about Elon? Have been meaning to do this after he DMd about not being in the photo from the first day of OpenAI. Just about how much I and others look up to him, how critical his early contributions to OpenAI are, etc.
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 13/10/2025
[This document is from FTC v. Meta (2025).]
030
Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 13/10/2025
Mark Zuckerberg messages Facebook employee April 9, 2012
Facebook employee
Wow, awesome news. I like that you’re not killing the independent product. I love instagram.

Mark Zuckerberg
Yeah, I remember your internal post about how Instagram was our threat and not Google+. You were basically right. One thing about startups though is you can often acquire them. I think this is a good outcome for everyone.
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 27/09/2025
[This document is from U.S. v. Holmes (2022).]
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 27/09/2025
Elizabeth Holmes's schedule Circa 2005–2009
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 09/08/2025
[This document is from OpenAI v. Open Artificial Intelligence (2025).]
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 09/08/2025
Elon Musk names OpenAI December 3, 2015
On Thu, Dec 3, 2015 at 11:18 AM, Elon Musk wrote:

Don't love the sound of Consider. What's the Cogito trademark issue?

A naming approach we could try is for the real name to be long, but have actual use be a contraction, eg the full name of SpaceX is Space Exploration Technologies Corp.

We could call this the Open Al Institute (Open AI-I!), but call it Open in everyday conversation. Looks like OpenAI.com is  available for purchase.
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 29/07/2025
[This document is from FTC v. Meta (2025).]
040
Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 29/07/2025
Mark Zuckerberg on buying Instagram April 5, 2012
Mark Zuckerberg
Just want to gut check that this is reasonable. Do you think it's way
too much?

Sheryl Sandberg
yes of course it is way too much

Sheryl Sandberg
but we knew that
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 19/07/2025
[This document is from OpenAI v. Open Artificial Intelligence (2025).]
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 19/07/2025
Greg Brockman
What do you think Cogito as a name?

Ilya Sutskever
Not a huge fan

Greg Brockman
noooooo!
(elon + sam both liked it)

Ilya Sutskever
What about you? :)

Greg Brockman
i came up with it ☺

Ilya Sutskever
Oops!Greg Brockman
haha
but, i like that it's relevant, pretty unbranded, and has good connotations of thinking/individualism
i don't like that it's hard to know how to pronounce.

Ilya Sutskever
Ah, is it Latin?

Greg Brockman
ah yeah. "cogito ergo sum"

Ilya Sutskever
Ah

Greg Brockman
descartes' "i think therefore i am"Ilya Sutskever
I can see why everyone liked it
I had friends who named their company "whetlab"
I didn't like it at once since I didn't know what whet meant
If you think that enough people know what cogito means than i support it

Greg Brockman
elon says:
Not bad. Sounds kinda cute. Most people won't get the latin, but the ones we want to join will.

I'd support that.

(or will be russian ☺)Ilya Sutskever
Knowledge of Latin is independent of knowledge of ML

Greg Brockman
hah, yeah. but more seriously, i think cogito is well-known enough

Ilya Sutskever
Maybe it's ok
Then I'm ok with it

Greg Brockman
cool
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 19/07/2025
Cofounders on naming OpenAI November 24, 2015
Greg Brockman
What do you think Cogito as a name?

Ilya Sutskever
Not a huge fan

Greg Brockman
noooooo!
(elon + sam both liked it)
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 12/07/2025
[This document is from FTC v. Meta (2025).]
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 12/07/2025
Mark Zuckerberg on rebranding Facebook May 3, 2018
When you get an Amazon Echo and start using it after you already use Amazon for commerce, you feel like Amazon is getting more relevant in your life. However, when you get Instagram and start using that in addition to Facebook, you feel like Facebook as a company is getting less relevant in your life.

This is because we haven't effectively linked Instagram and WhatsApp to our corporate Facebook brand. The majority of people don't even know we own those services, and many of those who do know that still see them as sufficiently independent acquisitions that they do not reflect on the person's relationship with Facebook.

I believe this contributes significantly to our brand issues. We have data that many people see Facebook as getting less relevant and believe our best days are behind us. Many think our services are getting worse -- which makes sense since our service is really about the network and we'reactively fragmenting our network. This all means people will be less likely to try our new products or any other features we build.

Long term this is likely a bigger brand issue for our products than our recent privacy issues because it gets to the heart of whether we are a company that can even build useful things and remain relevant in people's lives. Tech companies can withstand crises, but once you're Yahoo -- large but irrelevant -- it's tough to get people to even consider your products and it's difficult to succeed. Unfortunately, this brand dynamic is accelerating for us.

I do not believe our current corporate brand strategy is sustainable. From a relevance perspective, we need to find a way to make it so that when a person uses more of our apps, they feel like we're serving them better and becoming more relevant in their life, not less.

I only see two solutions to this: we either needto aggressively brand all of our services with Facebook as our corporate brand, or we need to create a new corporate brand and aggressively brand all of our services with that.

We are not a holding company, so Alphabet is not the right analogy for us. People have a relationship with us, and they do not with Alphabet. Most people don't know what Alphabet is, and Alphabet isn't relevant in their lives. In that case, Google remains the corporate brand people have a relationship with.

If we want to consider rebranding, a better model is Apple, Microsoft, or Samsung -- companies with strong consumer-facing corporate brands that are distinct from any specific product, but aggressively attached to all of their products.

That said, an impulse to consider rebranding feels largely motivated by fear that the Facebook brand is irreparably tarnished. I disagree with this and believe it would be difficult to executesuch a rebrand without it coming off like an Altria moment. The only way I could see this working is if we find a name so symbolic of our mission that it feels like we're running towards our core rather than away, and so inspiring that we'd proudly stamp it on every service we provide.

That seems difficult, so it's likely the strongest move is doubling down on the Facebook brand -- like Amazon has with their lead product -- and aggressively branding Instagram and WhatsApp with it. When you open those apps, it would say "Instagram by Facebook" and "WhatsApp by Facebook". We may even need to put Facebook branding in the chrome of those apps where the app names and logos are today to cement this relationship in people's minds.

We don't have to execute a change this month while the Facebook brand is at a global minimum, but this is such a big shift, it seems critical to have a coherent corporate brand moving forward, and it will take time to execute, so we should start now.
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
[This document is from In re: High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation (2011).]
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
From: Eric Schmidt
Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 15:17:11 -0800
To: Steve Jobs
Subject: RE: Recruiting

I'm sorry to hear this; we have a policy of no recruiting of Apple employees. I will investigate immediately ! Eric
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
Steve Jobs emails Eric Schmidt February 13, 2006
From: Steve Jobs
Sent: Monday, February 13, 2006 3:15 PM
To: Eric Schmidt
Subject: Recruiting

Eric,

I am told that Googles new cell phone software group is relentlessly recruiting in our iPod group. If this is indeed true, can you put a stop to it?

Thanks,
Steve
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 24/05/2025
[This document is from FTC v. Meta (2025).]
030
Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 24/05/2025
Mark Zuckerberg on competing with Elon Musk April 26, 2022
A lot of people are apprehensive about the direction Elon might take Twitter, so this might be a unique moment where many public figures or aspiring creators would be more open to moving. Defensively, there’s also a chance that Elon unlocks product iteration velocity and that Twitter could grow a lot as a competitor to us. Twitter has always underperformed as a business compared to its importance, but there’s no rule saying that will always be the case. It’s possible that a product focused on public discussions could be a lot bigger than Twitter is, and it’s possible that either we or Elon could build this.
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
[This document is from U.S. v. Google (2024) (1:20-cv-03010).]
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
Draft: "ChatGPT: H1 2025 Strategy" December 2, 2024
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
OpenAI's strategy for ChatGPT December 2, 2024
Who are our competitors?

We think about competition in two ways. First, there's the consumer Al chatbot space: Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Meta Al. With [ HYPERLINK  \I "_l6ubp9yx5tei" \h ]we are leading here, but we can't rest. We need the best free model, best Ul, and strongest brand. Looking ahead to 2025, [REDACTED] poses the biggest threat due to their ability to embed equivalent functionality across their products (e.g. [REDACTED] without facing the business model cannibalization risks that Google does.

Then there's the broader game: building a super-assistant and then [REDACTED]. Now we're up against search engines, browsers, even interactions with real people. This one isn't a head-on match. It's about solving more and more use-cases and gradually pulling users in. That's why we don't call our product a search engine, a browser, or an OS — it's just ChatGPT.
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 04/05/2025
[This document is from FTC v. Meta (2025).]
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 04/05/2025
Sheryl Sandberg messages Mark Zuckerberg November 8, 2012
Sheryl Sandberg
I want to learn settlers of catan too so we can play

Mark Zuckerberg
I can definitely teach you Settlers of Catan. It's very easy to learn.
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 27/04/2025
[This document is from FTC v. Meta (2025).]
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 27/04/2025
We need to take this new dynamic seriously -- both as a competitive risk and as a product opportunity to add functionality that many people clearly love and want to use daily.

I suggest that you start thinking immediately about how to add ephemerality as an option into both Instagram and News Feed.

This could be very quick and simple -- as easy as an icon you toggle to have your post auto-delete in 24 hours. Or if you have better and simpler ideas, we can try those instead.

My guess is whatever we do first will be imperfect because we are not used to this behavior yet and people are not used to having this functionality in our products either. But I think it’s important for us to dive in and explore here. We’ll learn more by trying things quickly, and then we’ll perfect it in time.

Overall, helping people share moments however they want is our mission, so we can’t sit around as Snapchat popularizes a new type of sharing. We need to make sure our products are the best way to share contently broadly and ephemerally.
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 27/04/2025
One key insight that makes this work is that the stories expire after 24 hours rather than after you view them.

It’s quite easy to imagine how this would work in any feed product. I struggled to imagine what a feed product would look like where you viewed a post once and then it disappeared, but it’s very easy to imagine a product where posts expire and are automatically deleted after some period of time.

If I heard a stat Kevin shared the other day correctly, deleting posts after a period of time may already be a normal behavior on Instagram. So offering this as a feature would just make the behavior people want even easier while making it clear that this behavior is welcome and fits the purpose of our products.

Second, the growth of Snapchat Stories means that Snapchat is now more of a competitor for Instagram and News Feed than it ever was for messaging.

Snapchat was always in somewhat market from text messaging. But Snapchat Stories serves the exact same use cases of sharing and consuming feeds of content that News Feed and Instagram deliver.
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 27/04/2025
Mark Zuckerberg: We need to take Snapchat Stories seriously June 22, 2014
On Jun 22, 2014, at 11:51 PM, Mark Zuckerberg wrote:

I’ve talked to a few of you about this directly, but I want to make sure you’re all tracking the success of Snapchat Stories.

They announced this week that more than 1 billion stories are viewed daily, and that number has doubled in the past 2-3 months. They have 50-100m daily actives, so that’s between 10-20 stories per person daily and growing quickly. They also said that now more stories are viewed daily than snaps, which means this is quickly becoming their primary product.

This is worth noting for a couple of reasons:

First, it’s a clear existence proof that ephemerality works in large semi-public feed products.

I was skeptical at first of why someone would want to broadcast something so raw to so many people at once, but between playing with Slingshot and now seeing these stats, it’s completely clear that this is a very real mainstream sharing use case.
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
[This document is from FTC v. Meta (2025).]
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
October 31, 2013
Alternatively, we could choose to not meet his ask here and having a smaller percentage in cash, but if we do that then we should try to get closer to his ask on everything else, or else the risk that he rejects this will start to increase meaningfully in my view.

For what it's worth, even if we meet him on price and cash, we still need to negotiate on time of retention package since he had asked for 2 years and we'd really need this to be longer. If we negotiate on too many things, I do think he'll just walk and do his financing.

So I guess here are my questions on cash:

- If we offer $4b in cash, then are we comfortable with our level of cash balance assuming that at some point in the next half year we will likely get added to S&P and be able to raise more cashrelatively easily? I think I'm comfortable with this, but I just want to check.

- Is there a way to make a stock offer effectively equivalent to cash? That is, put collars on the stock to adjust the amount of it we give according to the price, not having limits on when they can sell, etc? How close can we get here?



From: David Ebersman
Received: Thursday, 31 Oct 2013, 12:19pm

Mark,

[REDACTED]From: Mark Zuckerberg
Sent: Thursday, October 31, 2013 7:32 PM
To: [REDACTED]
Cc: Chris Cox; David Ebersman; Amin Zoufonoun; Sheryl Sandberg; [REDACTED]; [REDACTED]
Subject: Re: Sasquatch update - privileged and confidential

I delivered the offer to Evan and he seemed to take it well. He told me he thought he could get it done and that he'd call me back quickly.

Five hours later he called me and told me he was turning down the offer. He says the offer is what he wants but he just wants to build the company on his own.

I'm disappointed and frustrated by this. I don't know what else to say to him.At this point, we should probably prepare for it to leak that we offered $6b for them and all the negative that will come from that.



From: Sheryl Sandberg
Sent: 10/31/2013 8:59:48 PM

Yes - but we can dampen it by not confirming

I think you should potentially tell him that leaking this won't help his relationship with you.
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
October 31, 2013
From: Mark Zuckerberg
Date: Thursday, October 31, 2013 12:31 AM

Additional update: I just spoke with Andreessen and he believes it is a good idea for us to try to buy Snapchat at these prices or perhaps even higher. He has a number of arguments we can go through in person. This makes me more confident we should do this.

Tactically, if we move forward, I wonder whether we should offer $4b + $1.5b to try to save $500m or whether we should jump directly to what he's asking for as a best and final offer of $4b + $2b.On Oct 31, 2013, at 6:35 AM, David Ebersman wrote:

I think we can raise cash but we have no certainty about stock price. Companies often try to avoid raising money immediately after communicating to the world that they are using the money for M&A, in particular expensive M&A for a company with no revenues or profits. This combination of events can weigh heavily on the stock. So I think we need to be prepared for the possibility that we are raising money under $40, perhaps under the IPO price. The dynamics there get pretty negative. I am more positive about this deal if it is almost all stock (cash up $1B is manageable. We can make $2B work but it makes me nervous about dry powder). However, we are ready to execute if you want to raise cash. Our call last night serves us well in terms of the other downside of an equity offering which is disclosure, liability, etc.Full disclosure: If we do not have an index add, you would need to hit the road to explain the rationale for the deal in order to raise the kind of money we would be asking for.



On Oct 31, 2013, at 8:22 AM, Chris Cox wrote:

I would definitely try to do this at $6b. Given where we are, I think this will haunt us for a long time if we don't.

On cash: my guess is we could keep this close to ~$1b by walking Evan through the financial issues Ebes presents. It's not in either of our interests to jeopardize FB's value, nor is it to have an unstable cash position, and these are important to him assuming he joins. I think he could understand this a bit and it would help.On internal equity: this is likely going to be a very big issue for Kevin so I would reach out to him very early on to walk him through it. I'm less worried about other FB employees since this is so clearly about insane and non-replicable growth numbers vs. a talent acquisition.



From: Mark Zuckerberg
Sent: Thursday, October 31, 2013 8:33 AM

What he told me last night was "$8b with the majority in cash". Given that I don't think the retention package should be cash, that means that in order to get to even half the value to him being in cash, we'd be offering the whole $4b upfront in cash.
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
October 30, 2013
matter what. He told me he had done the analysis but hadn't wanted to call me because he was afraid he'd offend me. I told him he wouldn't offend me and he finally shared that his number was $8b with majority cash, or some structure that would be equivalent to him to as if he had sold the company for that much. I told him it was crazy but I wasn't offended, wished him luck and then we got off the phone again.

He owns 25% of the company, so it seems likely what he really wants is to make $2b personally pre-tax and $1b post-tax. In the structure that l'd proposed before, we offered $3b for the company and $1b in retention packages for him and his co-founder. That was equivalent to as if we bought the whole company for $5b from his perspective, since he'd get $0.50 of every $1 of retention package and only $0.25 for every $1 of consideration for the company.The crazy thing is that if the high end of our range is $5-6b, then it may still be possible to get this done at the very highest end of this range. If we offered $4b for the company and $2b in retention, that would cost us $6b but would achieve his financial goals. Alternatively, if we offered $4.5b for the company and $1.5b in retention, that might be more palatable to the investors and although it wouldn't quite achieve his financial goals, it might be close enough that he'd compromise. There are a number of considerations from our side that we need to weigh before making an offer here:

- What is our actual batna? I still think $5-6b is expensive but reasonable, but we should confirm that.- On the mix of cash vs stock, if we might do an offering soon, shouldn't we be fairly agnostic on this, or am I missing something here? I'm not sure how cash would work for retention, so all or most of the initial consideration would need to be cash. Is this an optics issue even if not a substantive one?

- How will this impact future M&A? It will make things more expensive, but are we okay with that?

- How will that impact perception of fairness internally? For employees who haven't left for startups? For Kevin and Instagram?

- What is the cost to us if this leaks and still doesn't get done, which is definitely possible?

[REDACTED]There is time urgency because Evan is pushing to close his financing at $3b+ valuation on Friday, so if we want to do this before then we need to make a decision tomorrow morning.

If we want to move forward, my proposal would be we increase our offer to $4b for the company and $1.5b in retention. That gets him 7/8 of the way towards his financial goal, bringing him close enough that he should engage, while bringing the total cost to us to $5.5b, which still gives us slightly more room to negotiate if necessary. It would also give us a headline cost of just a little more than what they'd raise money at normally, which will make this seem somewhat less crazy.

I think I am in favor of trying this, but it's very aggressive so I want to sleep on it and get your opinions in the morning. I'm sending this now so you can consider all the issues and be ready to discuss tomorrow.
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Internal Tech Emails @techemails.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
October 28–30, 2013
On Oct 28, 2013, at 11:58 AM, Mark Zuckerberg wrote:

I just talked to Evan again to make sure he understood the misaligned incentives he has with his investors.

His said the he and Bobby really thought they could build a $10b+ business and wanted to try to do it. He also said that we were going to do something, he'd want to push to make the retention packages shorter, like 2 years instead of 4.

We're going to talk again tonight and he's going to have a counter offer then (or he said he would), but this is looking less and less likely at this point.On Oct 29, 2013, at 8:32 AM, Mark Zuckerberg wrote:

Update: Evan didn't call or message me last night, and rather than ping him I just let it drop.

Amin thinks he may just be playing coy, but my sense is he just doesn't want to sell. This wouldn't be the first time Amin was right and I was wrong about a situation like this though.

I'll update again if he gets in touch, but otherwise I'm assuming this isn't happening for now.On Oct 29, 2013, at 11:29 PM, Mark Zuckerberg wrote:

After not calling me last night, Evan pinged me this afternoon asking to talk tonight. He said to call him after 9:30, but when I called him at 10 he didn't pick up and message me back.

Separately, Yuri told me that Evan is pushing him very hard to close the financing by Friday.

I will keep you updated on this when we finally connect, but based on all these signals it seems very unlikely that he wants to sell at this point.On Oct 30, 2013, at 11:30 PM, Mark Zuckerberg wrote:

I sent Evan a note tonight telling him I wanted to close it out and wishing him luck with the financing.

We talked for a few minutes after that where he reaffirmed that he thought staying independent was the right path, especially since economically we were so far apart. I didn't press him on this since the point of the call was to close out the process.

After that, I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that his range and ours might not be so different, so l called him back and told him it would bug me forever if I didn't ask him whether he had actually done the analysis I'd asked about what number he'd sell at or whether he had just decided he wanted to stay independent no
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