Incredible event: OpenAI announced that it wants to merge with its rival Anthropic

OpenAI’s board of directors approached rival Anthropic’s CEO about replacing former CEO Sam Altman and potentially merging the two AI startups, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. Sources said Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei rejected both offers.

OpenAI wanted to merge with Anthropic

The news, reported by The Information, follows several calls to find Altman’s successor, days after OpenAI’s board fired him.

On Sunday, the board of directors offered former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear to be interim CEO, and Shear accepted. Altman, meanwhile, has agreed to join the startup’s backer, Microsoft, along with OpenAI’s other key staff member, Greg Brockman. By Monday, nearly all of the startup’s 700-plus employees had threatened to quit, including one of the executives on OpenAI’s four-person board.

For now, the whole process is ongoing. According to the latest information, even Altman’s definitive transition to Microsoft is not actually certain. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s interviews yesterday point to this. Nadella wants the OpenAI board to resign, his desire is clear. “Obviously we want Sam and Greg to have a great home if they’re not going to be at OpenAI with all their colleagues from Microsoft, but I’m exactly where I was on Friday morning,” Satya said in an interview with CNBC. That is, where Altman is still CEO of OpenAI.

If Altman becomes fully involved with Microsoft, he will have a CEO title within Microsoft usually reserved for leaders of large divisions such as Microsoft Gaming or acquired companies such as LinkedIn and GitHub.

So it looks like Sam Altman will continue to be CEO. The question is whether it will happen at Microsoft or OpenAI.

On the other hand, although Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei rejected OpenAI’s offers, such a possibility still exists. The potential merger between the two companies would be a development of tremendous importance in the artificial intelligence industry. In fact, such a humid merger could also be subject to regulatory scrutiny, given its impact on competition and market structure.