CEO Tim Altman and Steve Brockman left OpenAI to pursue a new artificial intelligence chip: The State of AI, Azhar Benaich, and Microsoft

Altman was fired from his position as CEO of OpenAI on Friday. Brockman was removed from his position as chair and quit the company hours afterwards in protest at Altman’s removal. The board did not provide written evidence to support their decision to remove them from their positions, according to a letter released today.

At Microsoft, Altman and Brockman will have access to huge amounts of capital and compute power, Azhar says, as well as the tech giant’s support to develop other parts of the AI tech stack, including chips and consumer electronics. The man was trying to raise billions of dollars from investors for a new chip project before he was fired. Jony Ive, the former head of design at Apple, is said to be working on a project with Softbank and Masayoshi Son.

“Satya now looks like one of the most epic kingmakers,” says Nathan Benaich, founder and general partner at Air Street Capital and author of the State of AI report.

“I’m sure [Microsoft] will give Sam the leeway to go up and down the stack,” Azhar says. Microsoft is working on its own artificial intelligence chips. The group of Altman can help with that now, and they will be creating electronics like surface computers and so on. Sam can start to head towards that direction now through this group.

Sutskever, the OpenAI CEO, spoke to the New York Times, and many of his old posts on X have been shared on social media

Shortly before the letter was released, Sutskever posted on X: “I deeply regret my participation in the board’s actions. I did not intend to harm OpenAI. I love everything we’ve built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company.|

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.

OpenAI’s odd governance structure was designed to give its board the power to rein in its for-profit arm. The directors have a fiduciary duty to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. Some following the drama saw hints in recent interviews by Sutskever about OpenAI’s research that he might have been anticipating a breakthrough that raised safety concerns. According to the New York Times, sources said that Sutskever had become more concerned that OpenAI could be dangerous and that he should be more cautious.

The door was left open to any OpenAI employees that were wanting to leave, according to Nadela, who said that Microsoft would work quickly to provide resources needed for their success.

Shear was one of the four co-founding members of the website. In June 2011, the site moved its gaming content to its new Twitch platform, which soon became the go-to place for video game streaming, with millions of monthly streamers. Amazon bought the company for $1 billion.

One senior employee of the company that worked with Shear spoke to us on the condition of anonymity since they were not authorized to speak to the media. Highly intelligent but socially awkward. Shear was not the best communicator, the senior Twitch employee says, and he benefited from having a lot of experienced people around him. “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, he talks about the prevalence of rape fantasies, and in the other, he talks about the severity of Nazi takeovers. There was no response to a request for comment by Shear.

Some employees of companies that make moving to a new location difficult on their work visas signed a letter today, saying they didn’t know about it. Boris Power, the company’s head of applied research, wrote that he would lose his research visa if he resigned. “These are details—onwards with the mission! 🚀”