Healthy companies are led by competent, commercially successful and globally loved founders, and they are generally not tempted to fire them. When Sam Altman took the stage in San Francisco on November 6, all of this defined his role at OpenAI.The co-founder and chief executive has launched a global race for AI supremacy, helping OpenAI overtake much larger rivals, where he is regularly compared to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. However, just 11 days after OpenAI’s developer conference, Altman would be fired from his own company. Executives and investors loyal to Altman would quickly launch a strong push to bring back the big name, and the board would ultimately ignore them and hire former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear to replace Altman. Sam Altman would head the new artificial intelligence team established by Microsoft.
Altman: The person who made OpenAI OpenAI
At the company’s first developer conference on November 6, applause for Altman seemed universal. 2 million customers, including more than 92% of Fortune 500 companies, were upgrading OpenAI and Altman.
The biggest reason for this was Microsoft, which invested $13 billion in the company and led Altman to surpass rivals such as Google and Amazon in certain categories of cloud computing, revitalizing the Bing search engine and positioning the company as a leader in the cutting-edge software category.
At the event on November 6, Altman invited Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to the stage and asked what he thought about the partnership. Nadella smiled and answered the question simply: “We love you guys.” Nadella also thanked Altman for “building something magical.”
But while customers and investors were happy, there was one section that was deeply skeptical of Altman and the idea of a commercial AI company: Altman’s own board of directors. Although the board included Altman and a close ally, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, the board was ultimately controlled by scientists and their interests who worried that the company’s expansion was out of control, perhaps even dangerous.One thing is certain: The majority of OpenAI’s board is deeply concerned about the risks of artificial intelligence. However, not everyone takes this scenario seriously. Other AI leaders, including Altman, argue that such concerns can be managed and that the potential benefits of making AI widely available outweigh the risks.
Skeptics prevailed
On Friday, November 17, skeptics prevailed and the board approved the sudden ouster of one of the most famous living founders. Since the decision was announced, OpenAI has made almost no effort to ensure a smooth transition. Even the text of the decision implied that Altman was dishonest: “he was not consistently candid in his communications.”
OpenAI Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap later said in a memo to employees that he did not accuse Altman of misconduct, but attributed his dismissal to a “breakdown in communication” and not to an argument over security. The board acted without consulting Microsoft, and the hasty termination of a key business partner left Nadella “furious,” according to a person familiar with Nadella’s thinking.
Plans to bring Altman back
It is known that after his firing, Altman planned to establish a rival company, and investors tried to bring him back to the company. So much so that OpenAI employees expressed their support for Altman by launching a large campaign on Saturday. Some investors were even considering reducing the value of their holdings in OpenAI to zero. All of this was done to force the OpenAI board to resign and rectify their mistakes.
A source familiar with Nadella’s thinking said the Microsoft CEO has advocated for Altman’s potential return and would also be interested in supporting Altman’s new venture. The source predicted that if the board does not reconsider, a large portion of OpenAI engineers will resign in the coming days…
Has OpenAI deviated from its goals?
When OpenAI was founded by a team that included Altman and Elon Musk, its main goal was to “advance digital intelligence in the way most likely to benefit humanity as a whole,” as stated in a 2015 announcement.
The organization would not pursue financial gain for its own sake, but would instead act as a check on for-profit efforts and ensure the safe deployment of AI. Musk had provided most of the startup’s initial funding and helped recruit Ilya Sutskever as the company’s chief scientist early on.
This move by Musk was actually a coup. In a podcast earlier this month, Musk said he decided to fund OpenAI and recruited Sutskever from Google himself because he was concerned that Google was developing artificial intelligence without considering security. Sutskever is considered a legend in his field for his research on neural networks.Meanwhile, Musk added that hiring Sutskever ended his friendship with Google co-founder Larry Page. But Musk himself later distanced himself from Altman, leaving OpenAI in 2018 and cutting off funding support.
As a result, Altman needed money because venture capital firms and big tech companies were interested in backing ambitious artificial intelligence work. To tap into this pool of capital, it launched a new subsidiary of the nonprofit, which it describes as a “profit-limited” company. Altman also announced that he had no shares in the company, despite his position as founder and CEO. At the beginning of this year, he sold 49% of OpenAI to Microsoft and did not give Microsoft any seats on the board of directors. Ultimate power in the company rested with the board of directors, consisting of Altman, Sutskever, and Brockman.
In February, Musk complained at
New moves from Sam Altman
Altman also pursued side projects that had the potential to enrich himself and his investors, but were outside the control of OpenAI’s security-conscious board of directors. It was stated that while Altman was planning to establish his own artificial intelligence chip manufacturer, he presented these ideas to sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East. These funds are worth 10 billion dollars. Altman has reportedly recently offered investors custom, Nvidia-rivalling AI Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) chips. The TPU project was codenamed “Tigris” and was attracting the interest of a number of leading startups and even Microsoft. Microsoft recently announced the Azure Maia 100 and Cobalt 100 processors.
It has also proposed a potential multibillion-dollar investment with SoftBank Group, led by Japanese billionaire and technology investor Masayoshi Son, in a company it plans to launch with former Apple design guru Jony Ive to produce AI-focused hardware. (See: iPhone of artificial intelligence)These efforts, and the growing success of the nonprofit, brought Altman into conflict with Sutskever, who began to voice security concerns more vocally. In July, Sutskever launched a new team within the company focused on harnessing the “super-intelligent” AI systems of the future.
Tensions with Altman escalated in October when Altman moved to reduce Sutskever’s role in the company, angering Sutskever and leading to tensions with the company’s board of directors.
The turning point is November 6
At the Nov. 6 event, sources say, Altman made a series of announcements that angered Sutskever and those sympathetic to his point of view. Among these, there were customized versions of ChatGPT, so that everyone could make their own ChatGPT model and turn them into income.
In the days that followed, Sutskever took his concerns to the board. According to an account published by Brockman on X, Sutskever texted Altman on the evening of Nov. 16, inviting him to join a video call with the board the next day. Brockman was not invited. At noon the next day, Altman attended the meeting and was told he was fired. Minutes later the announcement was made and chaos followed.
Microsoft’s entry into action
As a result of all this chaos, perhaps the only winner was Microsoft. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced a few hours ago that he hired former OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and his co-founder Greg Brockman.
Nadella announced that both Sam Altman and Greg Brockman will join Microsoft’s new advanced AI research team. “We are extremely excited to share the news that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, along with their colleagues, will join Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team,” Nadella said in his post on X.
However, an atmosphere of uncertainty still prevails. It seems that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman will take some employees from OpenAI with them when they move to Microsoft. It is known that Microsoft is the main source of funding for OpenAI. ChatGPT and all other services run on Microsoft’s servers. The next process will be quite interesting, but let us also say that Nadella said, “We remain committed to our partnership with OpenAI.”
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