Following talks over the weekend for Sam Altman to return as OpenAI CEO following his shock firing, the company’s nonprofit board took a completely different tack and appointed former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear as interim CEO. Shear resigned as Twitch’s CEO earlier this year. Reportedly, Shear was the choice of executives because he understood the existential threats of artificial intelligence.3 CEOs in 3 days at OpenAI
If you followed developments over the weekend, you may have noticed that the appointment of Emmett Shear as interim CEO of OpenAI means three CEOs in three days. Shear will take over the seat from Mira Murati, who took over the seat for a while after Altman. Shear’s appointment appears to close the door on Sam Altman, who was fired on Friday after the board said he was “not consistently candid in his communications.”
As we reported in our news, the board quickly began discussing Altman’s return under pressure from investors and the threat of a mass employee strike. The decision to appoint Shear is a harsh response to investors, led by Microsoft and Thrive Capital, who have called on the board to resign and want Altman to take the helm again.However, OpenAI Chief Researcher Ilya Sutskever, who organized Altman’s dismissal, reportedly told employees that Altman would not return.
Shear’s appointment marks the latest twist in a saga that erupted with Altman’s shock firing, which stunned Silicon Valley and left the startup at the center of the artificial intelligence development frenzy in chaos. What happens next for Altman is completely unclear. Altman, who changed the world in a few months with the revolutionary ChatGPT chat robot he co-founded, increased the OpenAI initiative to a value of 80 to 90 billion.
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