CEO Considered for Top Position at OpenAI and Possible Merger Discussion

According to a recent report by REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration, the board of directors at OpenAI approached Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, about the possibility of replacing their current CEO, Sam Altman. The two AI startups had been in talks about merging, but Amodei ultimately declined both proposals. Meanwhile, Microsoft has hired several key personnel from OpenAI as employees. This move has caused unrest within the startup, with many of its 700 employees threatening to quit and one board member already resigning.

Anthropic was co-founded by former executives at OpenAI who left in 2020 due to disagreements over the safe development and governance of AI. Since then, the company has secured investments from Google and Amazon and has seen its Claude AI models gain prominence alongside OpenAI’s GPT series. Jeffrey Dastin reported on this story for Reuters in San Francisco and Urvi Dugar in Bengaluru. Dastin is a correspondent for Reuters who focuses on technology and artificial intelligence and holds a degree in history from Yale University. He was part of a team that examined Amazon.com’s global lobbying efforts and received a SOPA Award in 2022 for his work.