Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and other "colleagues" will lead a new AI research team at Microsoft, and OpenAI has named a new interim CEO, after a chaotic few days triggered by the board firing Altman and Brockman's subsequent resignation.
OpenAI hired Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear as its new interim CEO to replace the company's CTO Mira Murati, whom the board initially appointed to the role on Friday.
Murati will reportedly resume her role as CTO at OpenAI, according to the WSJ.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella confirmed the changes late Sunday evening on social media.
"We remain committed to our partnership with OpenAI and have confidence in our product roadmap, our ability to continue to innovate with everything we announced at Microsoft Ignite, and in continuing to support our customers and partners," Nadella wrote on X. "We look forward to getting to know Emmett Shear and (OpenAI's) new leadership team and working with them. And we’re extremely excited to share the news that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, together with colleagues, will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team. We look forward to moving quickly to provide them with the resources needed for their success."
Altman then responded to Nadella.
"The mission continues," Altman wrote.
OpenAI has raised at least $12 billion since 2015, according to an analysis by the San Francisco Business Times, mostly from Microsoft.
Shear also confirmed the news in a social media post.
"I took this job because I believe that OpenAI is one of the most important companies currently in existence," Shear wrote. "My priority in the coming weeks will be to make sure we continue to serve all our customers well. OpenAI employees are extremely impressive, as you might have guessed, and mission-driven in the extreme. And it’s clear that the process and communications around Sam’s removal has been handled very badly, which has seriously damaged our trust."
Shear then laid out a 30-day plan which includes hiring an independent investigator who will produce "a full report" — ostensibly regarding the events leading up to Altman's firing.
"Depending on the results ... I will drive changes in the organization — up to and including pushing strongly for significant governance changes if necessary," Shear wrote, and continued that he "checked on the reasoning" behind Altman's removal.
"The board did *not* remove Sam over any specific disagreement on safety, their reasoning was completely different from that," Shear wrote. "I'm not crazy enough to take this job without board support for commercializing our awesome models."
Shear's appointment appears to be a defiant move by the board amid internal and external pressure for their own resignations and the reinstatement of Altman, who was rumored to already have a new venture lined up if he ultimately did not return to OpenAI.
Greg Brockman resigned within hours of Altman's firing on Friday. Brockman also co-founded OpenAI and had been its president and a board member until Friday when the remaining board members removed him from the board.
Questions have swirled since Friday when OpenAI's board announced that it had removed Altman after "a deliberative review process" because it "no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI."
Until Friday, Altman and Brockman were members of OpenAI's board. The remaining board members were the company's chief research scientist Ilya Sutskever, Quora's CEO Adam D’Angelo, robotics entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, and AI expert Helen Toner.
During her brief tenure as interim CEO, Murati had planned to rehire Altman and Brockman in some capacity, according to Bloomberg News which also reported that OpenAI's investors, including Microsoft and Thrive Capital, had pushed for the board to resign to reinstate Altman.
"I loved my time at OpenAI," Altman posted on X after his ouster. "It was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. Most of all I loved working with such talented people. Will have more to say about what’s next later."
Altman also reportedly took no equity stake in the for-profit side of the organization, The Information reported earlier this year, which was spun out from the non-profit arm in 2019.
"if i start going off, the openai board should go after me for the full value of my shares," Altman wrote in a social media post Friday evening.
It's still unclear exactly what lead the board to not only make the decision to remove Altman as CEO but also to act hastily — even Microsoft was blindsided by the news, Axios reported.
But a new report at The Atlantic claims that trouble has been brewing at OpenAI for about a year, ever since the company publicly launched ChatGPT.
Essentially, the fault lines were drawn along disagreements over which direction to take OpenAI and the speed of commercial development versus research on safety, The Atlantic report says.
By early 2023, "many members of the team, including a growing contingent fearful of the existential risk of more-advanced AI models, felt uncomfortable with how quickly GPT-4 had been launched and integrated widely into other products. They believed that the AI safety work they had done was insufficient," The Atlantic report says.
Altman and Brockman pushed for commercializing OpenAI's products while Sutskever wanted to prioritize safety-focused research.
OpenAI held its first developer conference on November 6, which Microsoft's CEO attended. Altman announced during the conference that OpenAI would launch an app store for GPT-powered chatbots.
In an interview with the Financial Times that was published on November 12, Altman also confirmed that OpenAI was developing the next version of its chatbot, GPT-5, and that the company would likely "raise a lot more" funding from Microsoft and other investors.
"Whether Altman stays or goes will do little to resolve a dangerous flaw present in the development of artificial intelligence," The Atlantic report concludes. "Though Altman and others pay lip service to regulation and say they welcome the world’s feedback, this tumultuous weekend showed just how few people have a say in the progression of what might be the most consequential technology of our age. AI’s future is being determined by an ideological fight between wealthy techno-optimists, zealous doomers, and multibillion-dollar companies. The fate of OpenAI might hang in the balance, but the company’s conceit — the openness it is named after — showed its limits. The future, it seems, will be decided behind closed doors."
