Former OpenAI board members describe extremely risky near-merger with Anthropic

OAKLAND, CALIF.— Former OpenAI board member Helen Toner shed new light on just how close the company came to a shotgun merger with arch-rival Anthropic in the chaotic aftermath of CEO Sam Altman’s firing in November 2023 – calling such a deal an “extremely risky move.”In video testimony played Thursday in federal court in Oakland, Calif., for Elon Musk’s bombshell lawsuit against OpenAI, Toner recounted a late Sunday night call with Anthropic board members including the firm’s CEO Dario Amodei to discuss the merger proposal — under which Amodei would have ended up helming OpenAI, too.“I thought it was an option worth considering among our set of difficult options,” Toner said, adding that OpenAI’s entire executive team was threatening at the time to resign over Altman’s ouster.

That made her view the prospect of a merger, which never came to pass, as a perilous one.OpenAI’s head of technology Mira Murati had been expected to step in to stabilize the firm but soon became “unwilling” to serve as interim CEO, according to Toner.That forced the board to consider more extreme options to “salvage the company,” she added.In previously shared testimony, Toner described Murati as two-faced about Altman’s firing.“She was waiting to see which way the wind would blow,” Toner said in comments played in court Wednesday, adding that Murati was “not willing to stick her neck out” and implied she was worried about “blowback for her career.” Tasha McCauley, another former OpenAI board member who testified via video Thursday, said Murati got cold feet about running the company after employees revolted over the board’s decision to fire Altman.

McCauley said Altman and fellow co-founder Ilya Sutskever had gotten the rank-and-file on their side by saying an “evil coup” was occurring, sparking fear throughout the company.In her own video testimony shared earlier this week in court, Murati said: “OpenAI was at catastrophic risk of ...