The OpenAI-Sam Altman Saga!

We have not seen this kind of Silicon Valley soap opera in a while. Last Friday, the OpenAI board fired its CEO Sam Altman who founded the company in 2015. The four board members cited the reason as Sam's non-transparent way of communication. Apparently he was not sharing many facts about the company with the board members.

The drama around Altman’s sudden ouster at OpenAI has exposed the deep rift inside the company over who should control its future. OpenAI started in 2015 as a nonprofit research lab, but in recent years under Altman’s leadership, it took on billions of dollars in investment from the likes of tech giant Microsoft and venture capitalists, and began developing consumer products. Outside critics and some employees worried the company had abandoned its mission and was behaving more like a Big Tech company when it was originally meant to provide a more transparent, democratic alternative to the tech giants.

Immediately after his firing, Greg Brockman, OpenAI President also resigned. Three more researchers followed the quitting process. Satya Nadella, Microsoft's CEO jumped in to hire Sam, Greg and other quitters to Microsoft to start a new research team for AI. In the meantime, current investors like Thrive Global and employees waiting for a share sell at a lofty valuation of $80B were getting disappointed that such sale will not occur. Afterall, greed plays a powerful role here.

Everyone at OpenAI wanted Sam Altman to be back and continue the for-profit arm of OpenAI to become a tech giant. Over 500 employees wrote a letter supporting Sam Altman and threatening to quit en masse. The drama was continuing into the late hours of Sunday. The board at OpenAI even appointed a new CEO.

Finally with lots of backdoor negotiation, a new board was created with Bret Taylor (ex-SalesForce and Twitter), Larry Summers (Treasury Secretary during the Clinton presidency and former Harvard President), and Adam D'Angelo (Quora CEO). The last one is a carryover from the previous board who voted to oust Sam. Three members of the old board resigned. They were mostly AI researchers - Ilya Sutskever, an OpenAI founder; Ms. Toner, a director of strategy at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology; and Ms. McCauley, an entrepreneur and computer scientist. Their focus was to build a non-profit organization for safe AGI for humanity.

Sam Altman, who was fired on Friday from his role at ChatGPT maker OpenAI, will return to his post as chief executive, ending a boardroom drama that has transfixed Silicon Valley and exposed the power struggles over who has control over the future of artificial intelligence.

Back to where it all started!