Timing OpenAI: How Well Will OpenAI Be Going after Sam Altman? Two People Who Know OpenAI Live and Work in Turbulent Environments

Altman’s firing caught investors off guard, including prominent firms such as Khosla Ventures, which has a significant stake in OpenAI, as well as Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, which have smaller slices of shares, according to two people familiar with the matter not authorized to speak to media about the startup. Spokespeople for Khosla, Sequoia, and Andreessen declined to comment.

The effort to restore Altman and replace the board had difficulty because of the role of existing directors in choosing their replacements, according to the report.

The structure of Openai has proven to be in conflict with the need to support cutting-edge research through huge amounts of equity investment, according to Nathan Benaiche, general partner of Air Street Capital. He says that it appeared that physics won out after the experiment, which was to defy corporate physics.

When Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and other investors formed the startup behind ChatGPT as a US not-for-profit organization in 2015, Altman told Vanity Fair he had very little experience with nonprofits. He said that he was not sure how it would go.

“OpenAI’s stability and success are too important to allow turmoil to disrupt them like this,” says Shear. “I will endeavor to address the key concerns as well, although in many cases I believe it may take longer than a month to achieve true progress.”

Shear resigned as Twitch CEO earlier this year, after co-founding the Justin.tv platform that eventually became Twitch. He’s taking over the position of OpenAI interim CEO at a turbulent time for the company. After the firing of Sam Altman, Mira Murati took over as interim CEO of OpenAI. Many OpenAI employees showed a public display of support for Altman amid negotiations with the OpenAI board to potentially bring him back.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella made the announcement that Altman, 38, would be coming on board in a post on X sent just before 3 a.m. eastern time Monday.

Nadella also said Greg Brockman, the former president of OpenAI who quit in protest after Altman’s sudden departure, would be joining the new AI division at Microsoft alongside Altman.

OpenAI, founded by Altman, Elon Musk and others about eight years ago as a nonprofit AI research lab, released ChatGPT last year, setting the pace for the entire tech industry’s focus on a sophisticated type of artificial intelligence known as generative AI.

OpenAI CEO Ilya Sutskever, the founder and CEO of Justin.TV, a YouTube platform for video game streaming, has written an interview with Shear

Remarkably, the letter’s signees include Ilya Sutskever, the company’s chief scientist and a member of its board, who has been blamed for coordinating the boardroom coup against Altman in the first place.

Nadela added that the Microsoft subsidiary would provide the resources needed for OpenAI employees to succeed and that it was open to them to jump ship.

Shear was a co-founder of Justin.TV. In June 2012 the site moved its gaming content to its new platform, which quickly became the go to place for video game streaming with millions of monthly streamers. The company was bought by Amazon for $1 billion.

“He’s a typical Silicon Valley engineer type,” says one senior Twitch employee, who worked with Shear for a number of years and spoke on the condition of anonymity since they were not authorized to speak to the media. “Highly intelligent but socially awkward.” Shear was not a good speaker, but he had people around him who were experienced that he could rely on. “He could be very blunt,” they add.

Since the OpenAI board announced the appointment of Shear, several of his old posts on X have been shared on social media. In one of his writings, he discussed the issue of rape fantasies, and in the other, he said that there were worse scenarios for a Nazi takeover than rape. Shear did not immediately respond to a request for comment.