SAN FRANCISCO (Diya TV) — OpenAI’s co-founder, Ilya Sutskever, has shared new details about the company’s 2023 leadership crisis, revealing deep divisions inside the artificial intelligence giant and a failed attempt to merge with its biggest rival, Anthropic. The disclosures come amid a renewed public feud between OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, reigniting tensions in the tech world.
In a newly revealed deposition from October 2025, Ilya Sutskever detailed how OpenAI’s board considered merging with Anthropic just one day after Altman’s abrupt firing in November 2023. The discussions, according to Sutskever, occurred while OpenAI faced intense internal turmoil.
Sutskever said board member Helen Toner either reached out to or was contacted by Anthropic on November 18, 2023. The talks involved Anthropic’s co-founders, Dario and Daniela Amodei, and included a proposal for Anthropic to take over leadership of OpenAI through a merger.
“I was very unhappy about the idea,” Sutskever said in his statement. He added that some board members, particularly Toner, were more supportive of the plan. The merger proposal quickly collapsed due to “practical obstacles,” Sutskever said. But the revelation highlights how close OpenAI came to an extraordinary reshaping during one of the most chaotic weeks in its history.
The board’s decision to remove Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman sent shockwaves through the tech industry. At the time, the board consisted of Sutskever, Toner, Tasha McCauley, and Adam D’Angelo. The group said Altman’s firing stemmed from a “loss of confidence” and alleged that he showed a “consistent pattern of lying,” according to a memo cited by Sutskever.
The decision immediately sparked outrage among OpenAI’s workforce. Nearly 700 of the company’s 770 employees threatened to quit unless Altman was reinstated. Microsoft, OpenAI’s largest investor, also applied pressure on the board, warning of significant fallout if the leadership crisis continued.
By November 22, 2023, the board reversed its decision. Altman and Brockman returned, and Sutskever later apologized publicly for his role in the firing. He left OpenAI in May 2024, ending nearly a decade with the company he helped found.
The idea of merging with Anthropic was striking because the company was founded by former OpenAI executives who left over disagreements about AI safety and corporate direction. Dario and Daniela Amodei launched Anthropic in 2021, promoting it as a safer and more transparent alternative to OpenAI.
Their potential involvement in taking over OpenAI’s leadership, even temporarily, underscored how divided the AI community had become. Both companies are now among the leading players in advanced artificial intelligence, with competing AI models — OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude.
The deposition has also reignited the long-running feud between Sam Altman and Elon Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but left the board in 2018. Musk sued OpenAI in 2024, claiming the company abandoned its nonprofit mission by partnering too closely with Microsoft.
Following the release of Sutskever’s testimony, Musk posted on X, accusing Altman of “theft.” Altman responded by suggesting Musk had wanted Tesla to take control of OpenAI years earlier. “Can’t we all just move on?” Altman wrote. Musk fired back by sharing a link to Sutskever’s 52-page deposition, calling it “A tale in 52 pages.”
The exchange reignited online debates about leadership, transparency, and ethics in artificial intelligence development. Despite the internal strife, OpenAI has continued to expand its AI products and partnerships. ChatGPT remains one of the most widely used AI tools worldwide, and the company continues to collaborate closely with Microsoft.
Sutskever’s testimony offers the most detailed look yet at what happened behind the scenes during OpenAI’s 2023 crisis — from the secret merger talks to the internal power struggles that almost tore the company apart. While the boardroom battles may be over, the fallout continues to shape the public narrative around OpenAI, Anthropic, and the fast-moving race to dominate the artificial intelligence industry.
