OpenAI passes through decisive hours, while negotiating the possible return of Sam Altman as CEO. In the midst of the tremendous soap opera, new details of the chaos have become known in the hours following the CEO’s dismissal. The most curious indicates that the board of the artificial intelligence laboratory attempted a merger with Anthropic.
This is how it reveals The Informationwhich indicates that the OpenAI board reached out to Dario Amodeico-founder and CEO of the aforementioned startup, with the aim of analyzing the possible union between both companies.
Let’s keep in mind that Anthropic is one of OpenAI’s main rivals in the development of artificial intelligence models. In fact, this company gained special relevance this year after launching Claudea chatbot similar to ChatGPT that stands out for being less racist and sexist.
According to the aforementioned report, the possibility of merging OpenAI with Anthropic was an attempt to seduce Amodei to take on the role left vacant after Sam Altman’s firing. However, the aforementioned rejected that possibility. It is unknown, in any case, if there was a formal offer for the hypothetical union between both startups.
The approach to Anthropic is not surprising. Dario Amodei was a top executive at OpenAI, serving as Vice President of Research. However, he left with his sister Daniela, who was also part of the company, in disagreement with the increasingly strong bond between Sam Altman and Microsoft. In 2021 they founded their own startup and started working independently. Since then, they have raised millions of dollars in funding from Google, amazon and, curiously, Alameda Research.
OpenAI wanted to merge with Anthropic to find a replacement for Sam Altman
As we already said, OpenAI’s strategy would have been to merge with Anthropic so that Dario Amodei would take over as the new CEO. However, his name is not the only one that was in consideration. The Information also claims that the board of directors of the San Francisco startup had at least two other possible candidates in his sights.
One of them was Alexander Wangfounder and CEO of Scale AI, a company dedicated to improving the implementation and operation of artificial intelligence for its clients. At 26 years old, he is already considered the youngest billionaire in the world. His firm has become one of the most sought after in the business field, having worked for giants such as Toyota and Uber. And he also has ties to the US Army.
The other person consulted to take over the management of OpenAI was Nat Friedman. The former CEO of GitHub, who left his position in 2021, but remained linked to that firm as “president emeritus”, has become a prolific investor in ventures linked to AI. Like the leader of Anthropic, Friedman and Wang rejected challenge to take Sam Altman’s chair.
It is in this scenario that the idea of Altman’s return would have been encouraged. Although the still former CEO of OpenAI has committed to joining Microsoft, he is battling with the startup’s board of directors to regain his position. In fact, the Californians confirmed last night that they are negotiating the possible return of him and It is expected that there will be news this Tuesday.