According to Reuters, two informed sources revealed that the board of directors of OpenAI has been in contact with Dario Amodei, the CEO of its competitor Anthropic, to discuss taking over the position left by former CEO Sam Altman, as well as a potential proposal for the merger of the two AI startups. However, Amodei has rejected both of these proposals.
Several co-founders of Anthropic were former executives at OpenAI before 2020, but they left due to disagreements with the company on how to ensure the safe development and management of AI. Anthropic has received investments from Google and Amazon, and its AI model Claude is competing with OpenAI’s GPT series.
Last Sunday (19th), the board of directors of OpenAI proposed that former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear serve as interim CEO, a proposal which Shear accepted. At the same time, Altman agreed to join this new startup as a supporter along with other key members of OpenAI at Microsoft. By Monday, almost all of OpenAI’s 700 employees threatened to resign, including one executive from the current four-person board of directors at OpenAI.
However, according to The Verge, Altman’s move to Microsoft is not yet finalized. Multiple sources indicated that if the remaining members of the board who fired him resign, he and co-founder Greg Brockman are still willing to return to OpenAI.