AI Board Extends Job and Merger Proposal to Anthropic CEO

According to REUTERS/Dado Ruvić/Illustration, Anthropic’s logo can be seen in a March 31, 2023 illustration. OpenAI’s board of directors has reportedly reached out to rival Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, to discuss the ouster of their CEO, Sam Altman, and the possibility of a merger between the two AI startups. However, Amodei rejected both proposals as reported by The Information on Monday. OpenAI, led by board member Adam D’Angelo, declined to comment.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has taken on Altman and other key OpenAI staff as employees. This has caused unrest at OpenAI with nearly all of the startup’s 700 employees threatening to quit and one of the four board members already resigning. Anthropic was co-founded by former OpenAI executives who split from their previous employer in 2020 over disagreements over safe development and governance of AI. Anthropic has secured investments from Google and Amazon and its Claude AI models have gained traction alongside OpenAI GPT series.

Reporting by Jeffrey Dustin in San Francisco and Urvi Duggar in Bengaluru; Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee and Sam Holmes. Jeffrey Dustin is a Reuters correspondent based in San Francisco who focuses on technology industry and artificial intelligence. He previously wrote about airlines and travel from the New York bureau and holds a degree in history from Yale University. He was part of a team that examined Amazon’s global lobbying efforts and earned the 2022 SOPA Award.