OpenAI on Friday announced its new board and the wrap-up of an internal investigation by U.S. law firm WilmerHale into the events leading as much as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s ouster.
Sam Altman may also rejoin OpenAI’s board.
The new board members are:
- Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who can be on the Board of Directors at Pfizer and on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
- Nicole Seligman, former EVP and Global General Counsel of Sony and President of Sony Entertainment, who can be on the Board of Directors at Paramount Global, Meira GTx and Intuitive Machines, Inc.
- Fidji Simo, CEO and Chair of Instacart, who can be on the Board of Directors at Shopify.
The three new members will “work closely with current board members Adam D’Angelo, Larry Summers and Bret Taylor in addition to Greg, Sam, and OpenAI’s senior management,” in keeping with a release.
OpenAI will proceed to expand the board moving forward, in keeping with a Zoom call with reporters.
OpenAI didn’t publish the investigation report but provided a summary of the findings.
“The review concluded there was a big breakdown of trust between the prior board and Sam and Greg,” Taylor said, adding that the review also “concluded the board acted in good faith… [and] didn’t anticipate a few of the instability that led afterwards.”
Taylor also said the board’s concerns didn’t arise regarding concerns over product safety and security, OpenAI’s funds or statements to customers or business partners, that it was “simply a breakdown in trust between the board and Mr. Altman.”
WilmerHale’s investigation began in December, and the lawyers submitted their report today, which included dozens of interviews with OpenAI’s prior board members and advisors, current executives and other witnesses. The investigation also involved reviewing greater than 30,000 documents, in keeping with a release.
“We have now unanimously concluded that Sam and Greg are the appropriate leaders for OpenAI,” Bret Taylor, chair of OpenAI’s board, said in a release.
“I’m very grateful to Bret and Larry and WilmerHale,” Altman said on the Zoom call with reporters. He added, speaking of CTO Mira Murati, “Mira particularly is incremental to OpenAI on a regular basis … but through that period in November, she has done a tremendous job helping to guide the company.”
He added that he’s “excited to be moving forward here” and for the situation to be “over.” He also mentioned he wished he had acted in a different way regarding differences in opinion with the board.
In November, OpenAI’s board ousted Altman, prompting resignations – or threats of resignations – including an open letter signed by virtually all of OpenAI’s employees, and uproar from investors, including Microsoft. Inside every week, Altman was back on the company, and board members Helen Toner, Tasha McCauley and Ilya Sutskever, who had voted to oust Altman, were out. Adam D’Angelo, who had also voted to oust Altman, stayed on the board.
When Altman was asked about Sutskever’s status on the Zoom call with reporters, he said there have been no updates to share.
“I really like Ilya… I hope we work together for the remaining of our careers, my profession, whatever,” Altman said. “Nothing to announce today.”
Since then, OpenAI has announced new board members, including former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. Microsoft obtained a nonvoting board observer position.
After ChatGPT’s launch in November 2022, it broke records on the time because the fastest-growing consumer app in history, and now has about 100 million weekly energetic users, together with greater than 92% of Fortune 500 corporations using the platform, in keeping with OpenAI. Last 12 months, Microsoft invested a further $10 billion within the company, making it the largest AI investment of the 12 months, in keeping with PitchBook, and OpenAI has reportedly closed a deal that may allow employees to sell shares at an $86 billion valuation, though the deal reportedly took longer to shut than expected attributable to the events surrounding Altman’s ouster.
The rollercoaster couple of weeks on the company are still affecting it months later.
This month, billionaire tech magnate Elon Musk sued OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman for breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty, court filings revealed on Thursday.
In his grievance, Musk and his attorneys allege that the ChatGPT maker “has been transformed right into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the most important technology company on this planet: Microsoft.” In addition they argue that this arrangement goes against a founding agreement and 2015 certification of incorporation that OpenAI established with Musk, who was a pivotal donor to a cofounder of OpenAI in its early years.
As a part of Microsoft’s contract with OpenAI, the tech giant only has rights to OpenAI’s “pre-AGI” technology, and it’s as much as OpenAI’s board to find out whether the company has reached that milestone. Musk argued in his filing that for the reason that OpenAI board shuffle in November – when Toner, McCauley and Sutskever were removed – the new board is “ill-equipped” to independently determine whether OpenAI has reached AGI and subsequently whether its technology is outside the scope of the exclusivity cope with Microsoft.
Lawyers told CNBC that that they had doubts in regards to the legal viability of Musk’s case, and OpenAI has said it plans to file a motion to dismiss all of Musk’s claims.
In response to the high-profile lawsuit, OpenAI reproduced old emails from Musk through which the Tesla and SpaceX CEO encouraged the rising startup to boost at the very least $1 billion in funding, and agreed that it should “start being less open” over time and “not share” the company’s science with the general public.
Musk’s lawsuit also follows some controversy over Altman’s previous chip endeavors and investments.
Just before Altman’s temporary ouster, he was reportedly looking for billions for a new and not-yet-formed chip enterprise code-named “Tigris” to eventually compete with Nvidia, traveling to the Middle East to boost money from investors.
In 2018, Altman personally invested in an AI chip startup called Rain Neuromorphics, based near OpenAI’s San Francisco headquarters, and in 2019, OpenAI signed a letter of intent to spend $51 million on Rain’s chips. In December, the U.S. compelled a Saudi Aramco-backed enterprise capital firm to sell its shares in Rain.