In March 2023, an illustration from Anthropic’s logo was discovered by REUTERS/Dado Ruvic. According to The Information, the board of directors at OpenAI approached Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, about replacing their CEO Sam Altman and merging the two AI startups. However, Amodei declined both proposals. It is reported that OpenAI board member Adam D’Angelo declined to comment on the matter. Meanwhile, Microsoft has hired Altman and other key personnel from OpenAI as employees. This move has caused unrest among OpenAI’s employees, with many threatening to resign and one board member already stepping down.
Anthropic, co-founded by former executives at OpenAI, split from their previous employer in 2020 due to disagreements over the safe development and governance of AI. Since then, Anthropic has gained prominence with its Claude AI models alongside OpenAI’s GPT series. Anthropic has secured investments from Google and Amazon, making it a formidable competitor in the AI space. Reporting on this topic is Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco and Urvi Dugar in Bengaluru for Reuters. Dastin is a correspondent who focuses on technology and artificial intelligence based in San Francisco. He previously wrote about airlines and travel from the New York bureau before joining Reuters and holds a degree in history from Yale University. He was part of a team that examined Amazon’s global lobbying efforts and won a SOPA Award in 2022 for his reporting on this topic.