OpenAI Still Trying To Lure Altman Back; Investors Could Sue

Despite co-founder agreeing to join a new AI research venture at tech giant , executives at the startup continue 鈥渋ntense discussions鈥� to bring him back after almost its entire staff threatened to quit.

In an internal memo , Anna Makanju, OpenAI vice president of global affairs, said company management was in touch with Altman, interim CEO , and the company鈥檚 board 鈥渂ut they are not prepared to give us a final response this (Monday) evening.鈥�

Earlier that day, nearly all of the company鈥檚 770 employees signed a letter to the company鈥檚 board saying they will leave the generative AI startup unless the board resigns and brings back Altman and former President .

While both Altman and Brockman had earlier agreed to join a new Microsoft venture, the software giant鈥檚 CEO, , made it clear through multiple interviews that the door remained open for Altman to return to OpenAI.

A lot to juggle

Trying to get Altman to return apparently was not the only thing the OpenAI board has tried to do in recent days to salvage the company.

The board of directors approached rival and about a potential merger after Altman was dismissed, . The intent was to get Amodei to replace Altman as CEO, according to the report.

Figuring out a way forward with or without Altman may not be the board鈥檚 only concern.

Some OpenAI investors are reportedly exploring legal action against the company’s board, . Some have even reportedly met with legal advisers to study options.

While Microsoft has famously invested more than $10 billion in the generative AI startup, other investors have also filled OpenAI鈥檚 coffers with hundreds of millions of dollars.

, the company has more than a dozen investors.

took part in a small seed round for the company, while and led a seed round.

Numerous big-name firms have taken to the secondary market to pick up shares in the company 鈥� including , , , , , , , and

Last month, a said will lead a deal to buy the OpenAI shares at a price that will value the artificial intelligence giant at at least $80 billion. That deal is not believed to have closed.

In other news

While OpenAI鈥檚 drama is dominating the news cycle, one of its international competitors made waves.

Israel-based said it closed a $208 million Series C funding at a valuation of $1.4 billion 鈥� nearly three months after it announced it had raised $155 million of the same Series C from investors that included and at the same valuation.

The additional $53 million included cash from and .

AI21 competes with the likes of both OpenAI and Anthropic. The startup has its own proprietary large language models, called Jurassic-2. Those models help power the company鈥檚 developer platform for building custom text-based business applications and its multilingual reading and writing AI assistant.

The company says it has now raised $336 million.