The protesters were waiting outside OpenAI’s offices when I arrived one morning in early August. They hoisted signs to “stop the AI race” and scrawled chalk messages on the sidewalk. A few dozen executives, representing some of the company’s most important customers, were trickling into the spacious, beige-toned building known as MB0, which OpenAI recently opened for its research and computing teams.
Someone wheeled a tall wall of shrubbery in front of the glass doors, attempting to block the view of the tiny encampment from the pristine lobby. The customers had come to preview Astra, OpenAI’s upcoming family of cutting-edge AI models. CEO Sam Altman had just returned from Washington, where he briefed officials behind closed doors about Astra’s capabilities.
Now researchers offered a glimpse of what the new model can do. In one demonstration, 16 AI agents divide a research-level math problem into subproblems, coordinate their work, and assemble a proposed proof. In another, Astra navigates well-known desktop software, creating and editing work across applications with unnerving speed.
Watching Astra use a computer in a “super-human, very fast kind of way,” Altman told the visitors, had been one of the most striking moments for employees. Astra would enable “persistent agents,” he explained—virtual colleagues toiling for sustained periods on tasks. But its biggest impact, he predicted, would come from people using it to discover new knowledge.
Anthropic, founded by OpenAI defectors, is now expected to be the first of the two companies to go public, two people familiar with its plans say, with the IPO as early as September. (TIME has a licensing and technology agreement with OpenAI. Salesforce, where TIME owner Marc Benioff is CEO, is an investor in Anthropic.) As Anthropic surged, OpenAI suffered a series of setbacks, including a spate of leadership departures. Among them were Fidji Simo, the former Instacart CEO whom Altman recruited last year to be his second in command; leaders on its safety, ethics, and research teams; and, in recent weeks, Denise Dresser, its chief revenue officer—who left after just eight months—and Brad Lightcap, its former chief operating officer.
Outside the company’s revolving doors, challenges mounted. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg poached key OpenAI researchers with lucrative pay packages. Google’s Gemini products now reach more than 1 billion people per month.
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