In March 2023, Anthropic’s logo was featured in an illustration dated by REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration. According to reports from The Information on Monday, OpenAI’s board of directors had approached Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei about replacing their current CEO, Sam Altman and the possibility of a merger between the two AI startups. However, Amodei declined both proposals. OpenAI, led by board member Adam D’Angelo, did not comment on the matter. The board has since appointed former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear as interim chief of the company for which he accepted. Meanwhile, Microsoft has taken on Altman and other key personnel from OpenAI as employees. This move has caused unrest among OpenAI employees with nearly all of its 700 staff threatening to quit and one of its four-person board members already resigning.

Anthropic is co-founded by former executives at OpenAI who left their previous employer in 2020 over disagreements over the safe development and governance of AI. Since then, Anthropic has secured investments from Google and Amazon and its Claude AI models have gained prominence alongside OpenAI’s GPT series. Jeffrey Dastin is a correspondent for Reuters based in San Francisco who focuses on technology industry and artificial intelligence. He previously wrote about airlines and travel from the New York bureau and holds a degree in history from Yale University. He was part of a team that examined Amazon’s global lobbying efforts, earning him a SOPA Award in 2022.