OpenAI board reportedly proposed replacing Altman and pursuing a merger with Anthropic

The OpenAI board approached the CEO of competing AI company Anthropic, Dario Amodei, with a proposal to replace Sam Altman as CEO and pursue a potential merger of the startups. The Information reports.

According to sources, Amodei declined both proposals, choosing to remain in his role.

Anthropic’s co-founders, who until 2020 were also OpenAI’s leaders, parted ways with their colleagues over disagreements about safe AI development and governance.

Since its founding the company has drawn investments from Google, Amazon and Spark Capital. Its language model Claude AI is regarded as one of the closest competitors to GPT.

Earlier, OpenAI announced Altman’s removal as chief executive. Following him, co-founder Greg Brockman and other influential project participants left.

Initially the board appointed CTO Mirai Murati as interim CEO, but after attempts to restore the previous leadership, the role was offered to Emmett Shear, co-founder of the Twitch streaming platform.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Altman and Brockman, along with their colleagues, would join the company as part of a group dedicated to AI research.

Subsequently, OpenAI staff drafted a joint letter to the board demanding Altman’s removal and the reinstatement of the former CEO. Otherwise, employees threatened to quit the company, following Altman.

In a recent interview, Sam Altman stated plans to secure additional funding from Microsoft to create artificial general intelligence.

In early November, OpenAI held a presentation in which it showcased turbo versions of ChatGPT and introduced a developer assistant.