OpenAI’s Customers Consider Defecting to Anthropic, Microsoft, Google

Questions about the future of OpenAI intensified on Monday, after board member and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever expressed regret for his participation in the firing of CEO Sam Altman. Meanwhile, OpenAI customers are looking for the exits, signaling a possible exodus of business that could devastate the startup.

More than 100 OpenAI customers contacted OpenAI competitor Anthropic over the weekend, a startup that has raised billions from both Amazon and Google in recent months, according to someone familiar with the situation. Others reached out to Google Cloud and Cohere, an OpenAI startup rival, said people with knowledge of the situation. Many OpenAI customers are also considering switching to Microsoft’s Azure service, which offers copies of OpenAI models and other models, according to someone familiar with the situation.

OpenAI investors on Monday, though, were holding out hope that Altman could return to OpenAI, according to people familiar with the matter.