On Monday (20th November), Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella announced that Sam Altman is joining Microsoft along with several other staff of OpenAI. Sam Altman is the former CEO of OpenAI, the artificial intelligence startup that runs ChatGPT. He was sacked from his role earlier this week. He will be accompanied by Greg Brockman, the co-founder of ChatGPT as Brockman is considered his close ally.
Following the development, Brockman expressed that he would step down from the board. He later quit his role as OpenAI’s president entirely as a protest of Altman’s ouster.
Taking to X, Microsoft chief Satya Nadella said, “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 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. We look forward to getting to know Emmett…
— Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) November 20, 2023
Nadella added that the Former OpenAI CEO would lead “a new advanced AI research team”.
Quoting Microsoft CEO Nadella’s announcement tweet, Altman responded by saying, “The mission continues.”
According to some reports International media has claimed that OpenAI could face a possible employee revolt and employees by hundreds could jump ship to Microsoft, however, the exact numbers are still unclear.
Meanwhile, the Former CEO of Twitch Emmett Shear has been appointed as the new interim CEO of OpenAI. Taking to X, he shared a lengthy post calling the job a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity”.
Today I got a call inviting me to consider a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to become the interim CEO of @OpenAI. After consulting with my family and reflecting on it for just a few hours, I accepted. I had recently resigned from my role as CEO of Twitch due to the birth of my…
— Emmett Shear (@eshear) November 20, 2023
However, before assuming the job, Shear pointed out that the process and communications around Sam’s removal had been handled “very badly”, which has seriously “damaged our trust”. He also listed out his priority areas for the next 30 days on the job which include investigating the process that led OpenAI to this juncture.
He added that he couldn’t take the job without the board’s support for commercialising the models.
However, amid announcements of an en-mass job switch by OpenAI staff and new appointment in the AI startup, one of the board members who was involved in sacking Altman claimed that he had made a mistake by participating in that decision.
I deeply regret my participation in the board's actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we've built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company.
— Ilya Sutskever (@ilyasut) November 20, 2023
Taking to X, Ilya Sutskever wrote, “Now I deeply regret my participation in the board’s actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we’ve built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company.”
Altman had received wide support from a number of Silicon Valley bosses. This includes former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt who called Altman “a hero of mine”. Additionally, there was backlash from investors as well which prompted speculations and media reports that Altman could be reinstated as OpenAI CEO before Satya Nadella cleared the air about Altman’s next move.
