Sam Altman, CEO of ChatCPT creator OpenAI, has resigned from the board of Seattle-based travel company Expedia Group Inc. (Nasdaq: EXPE).
Expedia announced Altman's resignation in a Friday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company named Scale AI founder and CEO Alexandr Wang as Altman's replacement.
The filing said Altman "resigned in order to focus on his other business interests and not because of any disagreement with the company, its management or the board."
Wang founded San Francisco-based Scale AI in 2016 when he was a 19-year-old student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The company provides correctly labeled data to help clients build artificial intelligence technology. Its clients include LinkedIn, the U.S. Army and Airbnb. According to Scale AI, the company has raised $603 million and made 7.7 billion annotations to date.
Scale AI was valued at $7.3 billion in 2021 but laid off 20% of its workforce at the start of this year.
Altman joined the Expedia board in 2019. It was the same year he left his role as president of the startup accelerator Y Combinator to take over as CEO of OpenAI. In May, Altman testified before members of a Senate subcommittee on the potential risks and benefits of artificial intelligence.
Expedia allows consumers to search and book travel through its website and that of subsidiaries like Vrbo and Orbitz. The company laid off 3,500 employees in February 2020 and had some additional layoffs in March of this year. In 2021, Expedia looked to declutter its operations through a rebrand, simplified customer experience and more defined business lines. It also formed a new corporate structure in 2021 with four departments: Expedia Services, Expedia Brands, Expedia Marketplace and Expedia for Business.
In the first quarter, Expedia generated $2.7 billion in revenue, up 18% year over year. The company had 16,500 employees at the end of last year, according to an SEC filing. Business Journal research indicates more than 4,800 of those employees are based in Washington state.
