OpenAI’s Board of Directors: Where Do We Stand? Where Are We Going? Why Have We Bounded So? What Have We Don’t Know Already?

The board pushed out a good man. Microsoft has invested $13 billion into OpenAI, which is said to have been working on a deal that would value the company at nearly $90 billion, but that is now in limbo in the wake of Altman’s exit.

An attempt to restore Altman as CEO and replace the board ran into difficulty Sunday over the role of existing directors in choosing their replacements, Bloomberg reported.

Nathan Benaich, general partner of Air Street Capital and coauthor of the “State of AI Report,” says OpenAI’s corporate structure has proven to be at odds with the need to support cutting-edge research through huge amounts of equity investment. “It was an experiment to defy the laws of corporate physics, and it appears that physics won out,” he says.

In 2015, when he was part of a group of investors who formed a US not-for-profit, Sam Altman told Vanity Fair he hadn’t had any experience with nonprofits. “So I’m just not sure how it’s going to go,” he said.

Altman, former president Brockman, and the company’s investors are still trying to find a graceful exit for the board, say multiple sources with direct knowledge of the situation. The sources characterized the hiring announcement by Microsoft, which needed to have a resolution to the crisis before the stock market opened on Monday, as a “holding pattern.”

The company’s chief scientist, and a member of its board, were blamed for orchestrating the coup against Altman in the first place.

Emmett Shear and the Open AI Board of a Security Research Center: What is Happening After ChatGPT, and Why Will He Be The Next Microsoft CEO?

At Microsoft, we are committed to our partnership with OpenArtificial and have confidence in our product Roadmap, our ability to continue to innovate, and also in support of our customers and partners. “We look forward to getting to know Emmett Shear and OAI’s new leadership team and working with them.”

New CEO Emmett Shear has so far been unable to get written documentation of the board’s detailed reasoning for firing Altman, which also hasn’t been shared with the company’s investors, according to people familiar with the situation. He said in a note to employees Sunday night that his first order of business would be to “hire an independent investigator to dig into the entire process leading up to this point and generate a full report.”

Now Shear takes over OpenAI in a huge shakeup nearly a year after the launch of ChatGPT. “I took this job because I believe that OpenAI is one of the most important companies currently in existence,” says Shear. I did not take the role lightly, even though the board shared the situation with me. Ultimately I felt that I had a duty to help if I could.”

The four remaining board holdouts are: Adam D’Angelo, Director of Strategy at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, and ex-geoSim Systems CEO; Helen Toner, Director of Strategy at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, and formerGeoSim Systems CEO. They have so far not responded to The Verge’s requests for comment.

The new leadership team of the OAI and we look forward to working with them. Sam and Greg, along with colleagues, will be moving to Microsoft to lead a new advanced artificial intelligence research team.

At 3 a.m. Monday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella made the announcement that there would be a post on X in which Altman would be joining the company.

How OpenAI Partners: Sam Altman isn’t showing up in the OpenAI Corporate Directory or that OpenAI is Undermining our Mission and Company

I believe we will want some governance changes. We just want to make sure that we do things in a manner that will allow us to continue to partner well. This idea that somehow suddenly changes happen without being in the loop is not good and we will definitely ensure that some of the changes that are needed happen and we continue to be able to go along with the partnership with OpenAI.

I reported earlier today that Sam Altman isn’t showing up in Microsoft’s corporate directory yet, according to multiple sources. Microsoft doesn’t have any set processes for 24 hour emergency deals, nor does it have detailed appointment to employees in any internal memos yet. If Altman is fully onboarded to Microsoft then he’ll have a CEO title inside Microsoft, which is typically reserved for the leaders of big divisions like Microsoft Gaming, or acquired companies like LinkedIn and GitHub.

OpenAI employees signing the letter accuse the company’s board of jeopardizing their work and having “undermined our mission and company.” They also reject the idea that OpenAI was pushing ahead without consideration for safety. They write that their work on safety and governance shapes global norms.

The Maia artificial intelligence chip was being tested and refined by Microsoft and Altman and OpenAI. Microsoft was quick to downplay its the chip’s impact on its close Nvidia partnership, but the Maia GPU is part of a series and the company is already working on a second generation.

The OpenAI board decided to hire a former CEO of a video game company as the interim leader despite calls for the company to bring back its previous leader.

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.

Benaich and Air Street Capital: Strategy Development and Strategic Planning for a New Generation of Deep Learning Networks in the 21st Century

Nathan Benaich is a founder and general partner of Air Street Capital, which is an author of a State of Artificial Intelligence report.