This whole weekend feels like a big pageeant to me, and a lot doesn't add up. Also remember that Altman doesn't hold equity in OpenAI, nor does Ilya, and so their way to get a big payout is to get hired rather than acquired.
Then again, both Hanlon's and Occam's razor suggest that pure human stupidity and chaos may be more at fault.
If I were one of their competitors, I would have called an emergency board meeting re:accelerating burn and proceeded in advance of board approval with sending senior researchers offers to hire them and their preferred 20 employees.