After a series of weekend negotiations, microsoft he said he hired Sam Altman – just two days later OpenAI’s board of directors abruptly removed him as CEO – while OpenAI recruited Emmet Shearmost recently CEO of live streaming platform Twitch, will take on the role of interim CEO.
Altman will lead a new artificial intelligence research team at Microsoft, alongside the former president of OpenAI. Greg Brockman (who resigned after Altman was fired on November 17)announced Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in a mail Sunday night. Microsoft previously announced plans to invest billions over several years in OpenAI, the research organization that created the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT. According to the New York Times, Microsoft has invested more than $13 billion in San Francisco-based OpenAI. Other investors in OpenAI include Sequoia Capital and Thrive Capital.
Meanwhile, OpenAI, launched as a nonprofit research lab in 2015, on Sunday named Shear, who left Amazon-owned Twitch in Marchits interim CEO.
Nadella wrote in the post on We look forward to meeting and working with Emmett Shear and the new OAI leadership team. And we are very excited to share the news that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, along with their colleagues, will join Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team. “We look forward to acting quickly to provide them with the resources necessary for their success.”
Altman, citing Nadella’s post, wrote on Sunday: “the mission continues.” Before Altman agreed to join Microsoft, he was reportedly already pitching a new AI startup to investors.
Shear, for his part, wrote on X that he had resigned as CEO of Twitch this spring “due to the birth of my son who is now 9 months old.” He said he took advantage of the “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to lead OpenAI “because I think OpenAI is one of the most important companies out there today. When the board shared the situation and asked me to take over, I did not make the decision lightly. In the end I felt I had a duty to help if he could.”
OpenAI had said on Friday that “Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, which hindered his ability to exercise his responsibilities. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.”
The details surrounding Altman’s overthrow remain murky. Ilya Sutskever, an AI researcher who is one of four OpenAI board members who ousted Altman, “was increasingly concerned that OpenAI’s technology could be dangerous and that Mr. Altman was not paying enough attention.” to that risk,” according to a New York report. Times report. A memo sent Saturday to OpenAI staff by COO Brad Lightcap said that “a breakdown in communication” led to Altman’s firing and not “misconduct or anything related to our financial, business, security or security/privacy”.
Shear wrote in his post that “it is clear that the process and communications surrounding Sam’s dismissal have been very poorly handled, which has seriously damaged our trust.”
According to Shear, in the next 30 days he plans to hire an independent investigator “to delve into the entire process up to this point and produce a full report”; “reshape the management and leadership team in light of recent departures to make it an effective force driving results for our clients”; and continue to talk to as many OpenAI employees, partners, investors and customers as possible.
Shear also wrote that “Before accepting the job, I checked the reasoning behind the change. the board did it No eliminating Sam for any specific safety disagreement, his reasoning was completely different than that. “I am not crazy enough to take this job without the support of the board of directors to market our amazing models.”
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives wrote in a note on Monday: “The embarrassing weekend circus show at OpenAI has finally been taken over by the adults in the Microsoft room, as Nadella & Co. has now added the AI hubs Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. join Microsoft to lead an advanced AI research team. OpenAI’s failed coup attempt by the 4-person board of directors did not want Altman to be its CEO again…. “So MSFT hired this key asset and will now oversee Redmond’s OpenAI alongside Nadella, which is music to investors’ ears.”
