Anthropic’s logo was visible in an illustration dated March 31, 2023, according to REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration. Recent reports indicate that OpenAI’s board of directors approached the CEO of rival Anthropic, Dario Amodei, to discuss potential mergers and replacing their current CEO, Sam Altman. However, Amodei declined both proposals as reported by The Information on Monday.

OpenAI has since offered Emmett Shear the position of interim CEO for which he accepted. Meanwhile, Microsoft has taken on several key personnel from OpenAI as employees, causing unrest within the startup with nearly all of its 700 employees threatening to quit and one board member already resigning.

Anthropic is a startup founded by former executives at OpenAI who left due to disagreements over safe development and governance of AI. 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 in San Francisco focuses on the technology industry and artificial intelligence for Reuters. He holds a degree in history from Yale University and was part of a team that examined Amazon’s global lobbying efforts in 2022 earning him a SOPA Award. Urvi Dugar covers this story from Bengaluru for Reuters.