Sam Altman has been fired from OpenAI, Inc., the 501(c)(3) nonprofit that acts as the governing body for OpenAI, the AI startup behind ChatGPT, DALL-E 3, GPT-4 and other highly capable artificial intelligence production systems. Both will step down from the company’s board and step down as CEO.
In a Position on OpenAI’s official blog, the company writes that Altman’s departure follows a “deliberative board review process” that concluded that Altman “has not been consistently candid in his communications” with other board members, “impeding the his ability to exercise his responsibilities”.
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“The board is no longer trusted [Altman’s] ability to continue driving OpenAI,” the blog post says.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Altman wrote that he “loved his time at OpenAI” and will have “more to say about what’s to come later.”
OpenAI’s dramatic leadership change will also see Greg Brockman — who was part of the team that co-founded OpenAI, like Altman — step down as chairman of the board but remain chairman of OpenAI, reporting to the newly appointed interim CEO company consultant. Mira Murati. Murati was previously CTO of OpenAI.
OpenAI says it will begin a formal search for a permanent CEO immediately.
“OpenAI was purposefully structured to advance our mission: to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity,” the board wrote in a joint statement. “The board remains fully committed to serving this mission. We are grateful for Sam’s many contributions to the founding and development of OpenAI. At the same time, we believe that new leadership is needed as we move forward. As the leader of the company’s research, product and security functions, Mira is uniquely qualified to take on the role of interim CEO. We have the utmost confidence in her ability to lead OpenAI through this transition period.”
The OpenAI Board of Directors now consists of OpenAI Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever. Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo. tech entrepreneur Tasha McCauley; and Helen Toner, director of strategy at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technologies.
Altman’s departure comes as a surprise, to say the least. The company just last week hosted its first developer conference, OpenAI DevDay, which Altman attended. Altman spoke at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference and event in Oakland, California on Thursday. And according on The Verge and The New York Times, citing multiple inside sources, said OpenAI employees learned of Altman’s firing when it was publicly announced.
Altman has a long history at the helm of OpenAI. After co-founding the company with Peter Thiel, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and others, Altman, who previously headed startup accelerator Y Combinator and also holds a board seat at Worldcoin, the ambitious cryptocurrency project, he initially served as co-chairman of OpenAI alongside Elon Musk. Musk left in 2018 to avoid a conflict of interest with Tesla.
Altman has in recent months played an active role in trying to shape regulatory responses to artificial intelligence, appearing at US congressional hearings and meeting in person with world leaders including President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron Macron, among others. an international political tour.
It’s unclear what mistakes Altman might have made in putting OpenAI in… for now. But they are apparently related to his relationship with OpenAI’s rather unusual board composition and corporate governance structure — and perhaps OpenAI’s active talks to raise significant new capital.
As a recent piece on VentureBeat explored, OpenAI’s for-profit subsidiary, OpenAI Global, LLC, is fully controlled by the non-profit organization OpenAI. While the for-profit subsidiary is allowed to commercialize its technology, it is subject to the nonprofit’s mission: to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI), or artificial intelligence that can — as OpenAI puts it — “overcome people, the very economically valuable work”.
The non-profit OpenAI’s board of directors has the power to determine when the company has achieved AGI and exclude that AGI from IP licenses and other commercial terms, including Microsoft, one of OpenAI’s biggest investors and a steadfast unifier of the various technologies of OpenAI.
Microsoft has poured $13 billion into OpenAI so far and has a 49% stake in the company. The former’s share price fell more than 1% in the last 30 minutes of trading, following the announcement of Altman’s departure. Worthy References Microsoft was notified that Altman would be leaving “minutes” before the public announcement.
OpenAI was founded as a non-profit organization in 2015, but restructured in 2019 as a “capped-profit” company to raise capital — a recognition of the enormous costs associated with training cutting-edge artificial intelligence systems. Underscoring the point, Altman told one interview this week with the Financial Times that it “hoped” Microsoft would increase its investment to help pay for “huge” upcoming model training costs.
When reached by email, OpenAI’s press relations declined to comment beyond the official blog post. But Microsoft PR provided this statement from Frank Shaw, its chief communications officer: “We have a long-standing partnership with OpenAI, and Microsoft remains committed to Mira and its team as we bring this next era of AI to our customers.”
Nadella later posted one statement:
“As you saw at Microsoft Ignite this week, we continue to innovate rapidly for this era of AI, with more than 100 announcements across the entire technology stack, from AI systems, models and tools in Azure, to Copilot. Most importantly, we are committed to delivering all of this to our customers while building for the future. We have a long-term agreement with OpenAI with full access to everything we need to deliver on our innovation agenda and an exciting product roadmap. and we remain committed to our partnership, and to Mira and the team. Together, we will continue to bring the significant benefits of this technology to the world.
