Altman issued his own statement, where he said things that were even more cordial.
“Thank you for everything you’ve done for OpenAI! You are a brilliant researcher, a deep thinker about product and society, and mostly, you are a great friend to all of us. We will miss you tremendously and make you proud of this place,” Altman said in his own statement on X. “I first met John in a cafe in Berkeley in 2015. He said something like ‘on one hand, it seems ridiculous to be talking about AGI right now, but on the other hand, I think it’s very reasonable and here is why and also here is why I think it’s important to be talking about it’ and then laid out a significant fraction of what became OpenAI’s initial strategy. That took about 15 minutes and then we awkwardly chatted for another 45.”
The exchange of pleasantries belies a fierce battle between OpenAI and Anthropic, which can also be seen as a proxy struggle for AI market dominance between Microsoft — the largest investor in OpenAI, and Amazon — the largest investor in Anthropic.
