On OpenAI Anthropic Merger Update, CEO declines offer citing his dedication to the company. Anthropic received funding from Google.
During the ongoing controversy at OpenAI, reports indicate that the company is negotiating a merger with its artificial intelligence (AI) competitor, Anthropic. The discussions are currently in the early stages of the process of development.
OpenAI Anthropic Merger
Following the dismissal of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the board of directors reportedly reached out to Dario Amodei, the co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, a competitor in the large-language model development space, regarding the possibility of a merger.
The goal was to convince Amodei to accept the position of chief executive officer at OpenAI. Nevertheless, the extent to which the merger proposal evolved into substantial deliberations still needs to be discovered.
Amodei promptly declined the CEO offer, citing his dedication to Anthropic, a startup embroiled in intense competition with OpenAI for customers and researchers, precisely due to the direct competition its chatbot, Claude, poses to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The announcement follows an intriguing development that occurred after Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, appointed Sam Altman and Greg Brockman to head the new AI research team. According to reports, 500 OpenAI employees out of 770 have expressed interest in joining the team led by Sam Altman at Microsoft.
Anthropic, which has been experiencing consistent expansion, recently secured an additional $2 billion in funding from competitors of Microsoft, including Amazon and Google. With the recent investments, the two-year-old startup, whose chatbot Claude competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, is aiming for a valuation between $20 billion and $30 billion.
FTX Anthropic Connection
Before its bankruptcy in November 2022, FTX had made a substantial investment of $500 million in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic. Given the substantial surge in Anthropic’s valuations, the value of its investments has increased substantially.
The FTX 2.0 Coalition, which consists of FTX creditors, has stated that an increase in Anthropic’s valuation could potentially result in a $3 billion to $4.5 billion increase in FTX’s stake, which could result in a complete recovery for FTX customers.
The recent injection of capital and the possible increase in the firm’s market value could potentially assist FTX in attaining a “100% recovery rate” in its assets during the bankruptcy proceedings of the cryptocurrency exchange.
The timing of the FTX bankruptcy restructuring team divesting its stake in Anthropic is still uncertain. It could depend on the company’s initial public offering unless extraordinary circumstances dictate an earlier sale.
