As Anthropic's negotiations with the Pentagon were collapsing, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told employees he was trying to "save" his competitor, according to internal Slack messages seen by Axios.
- At the same time, Altman privately vented that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei had spent years trying to undermine him.
Why it matters: The messages reveal Altman's conflicted thinking as OpenAI swooped in to secure a Pentagon contract Anthropic had just lost — portraying himself as a peacemaker even as his company emerged as the primary beneficiary.
