OpenAI’s board of directors proposed a merger with rival language model developer Anthropic with the aim of persuading co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei to replace ousted CEO Sam Altman, according to a source with direct knowledge. However, Amodei declined the offer due to his position at Anthropic, as the two companies compete fiercely to recruit researchers and win customers. It’s unclear whether the merger proposal led to any serious discussion. Altman was fired by OpenAI’s board on Friday.