OpenAI on Friday announced its new board of directors and the end of an internal investigation by US law firm WilmerHale into the events leading up to the ouster of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Sam Altman will also join OpenAI's Board of Directors.
The new board members are:
Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellman, former CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is also a member of Pfizer's Board of Directors and the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Nicole Seligman, former executive vice president and global general counsel of Sony Corporation and president of Sony Entertainment, is also a member of the boards of directors of Paramount Global, Meira GTx, and Intuitive Machines, Inc. Fiji Simo, CEO and chairman of Instacart, is also a member of the board of directors Shopify.
The three new members will work closely with current board members Adam D'Angelo, Larry Summers, and Brett Taylor, as well as Greg, Sam, and OpenAI's senior management, according to the statement.
OpenAI will continue to expand the palette going forward, according to a Zoom call with reporters.
OpenAI did not publish the investigation report but provided a summary of the findings.
“The review concluded that there was a significant breakdown in trust between the previous board and Sam and Greg,” Taylor said, adding that the review also “concluded that the board acted in good faith… (and) did not anticipate some of the instability.” Which then led.”
Taylor also said the board's concerns did not arise in connection with concerns about the safety and security of the product, OpenAI's finances or data for customers or business partners, as it was “simply a breakdown of trust between the board and Mr. Altman.”
WilmerHale's investigation began in December, and attorneys filed their report today, which included dozens of interviews with former OpenAI board members, advisors, current executives, and other witnesses. The investigation also included a review of more than 30,000 documents, according to the statement.
“We have unanimously concluded that Sam and Greg are the right leaders for OpenAI,” Brett Taylor, chairman of OpenAI's board of directors, said in a statement.
“I am very grateful to Brett, Larry and WilmerHale,” Altman said on a Zoom call with reporters. Speaking of CTO Mira Murati, he added, “Mira in particular has been working progressively at OpenAI all the time… but during that period in November, she did an amazing job of helping lead the company.”
He added that he was “excited to move forward here” and for the situation to “be over.” He also stated that he wished he had acted differently regarding differences of opinion with the board.
In November, OpenAI's board ousted Altman, which led to resignations – or threats of resignation – including an open letter signed by nearly every OpenAI employee, and an uproar by investors, including Microsoft. Within a week, Altman was back at the company, and board members Helen Toner, Tasha McCauley, and Ilya Sutskever, who had voted to fire Altman, exited. Adam D'Angelo, who also voted to oust Altman, remains on the board.
When Altman was asked about Sutskever's condition on a Zoom call with reporters, he said there were no updates to share.
“I love Elijah… I hope we work together for the rest of our career, my career, whatever,” Altman said. “There is nothing to announce today.”
Since then, OpenAI has announced new board members, including former Salesforce co-CEO Brett Taylor and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. Microsoft He was given an observer position on the board without a vote.
After launching in November 2022, ChatGPT broke records at the time as the fastest-growing consumer app in history, and now boasts about 100 million weekly active users, along with more than 92% of Fortune 500 companies using the platform, according to OpenAI. . Last year, Microsoft invested an additional $10 billion in the company, making it the largest AI investment of the year, according to PitchBook, and OpenAI is said to have closed a deal that will allow employees to sell stock worth $86 billion, although the deal reportedly The shutdown took longer than expected due to events surrounding Altman's ouster.
The company's two-week volatility is still affecting it months later.
Billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk has sued OpenAI founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman for breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty, court filings revealed Thursday.
In their complaint, Musk and his lawyers allege that the maker of ChatGPT “has turned into a de facto closed-source subsidiary of the world’s largest technology company: Microsoft.” They also argue that the arrangement conflicts with the 2015 incorporation agreement and certificate of incorporation that OpenAI created with Musk, who was a pivotal donor to one of OpenAI's founders in its early years.
As part of Microsoft's contract with OpenAI, the tech giant only has the rights to use OpenAI's “pre-AGI” technology, and it's up to OpenAI's board of directors to determine if the company has reached that milestone. Musk argued in his filing that since OpenAI's board was changed in November — when Toner, McAuley and Sutskever were removed — the new board is “ill-equipped” to independently determine whether OpenAI has reached artificial general intelligence (AGI), and thus whether Its technology was beyond the scope of artificial general intelligence (AGI). Exclusive deal with Microsoft.
Lawyers told CNBC they have doubts about the legal viability of Musk's case, and OpenAI 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, in which the Tesla and SpaceX CEO encouraged the startup to raise at least $1 billion in funding, and agreed that it should “start being less open.” Over time, the company's science is not shared with the public.
Musk's lawsuit also comes on the heels of some controversy surrounding Altman's past endeavors and investments in the chip space.
Briefly before Altman's ouster, he was reportedly seeking billions of dollars for a new yet-to-be-formed chip project codenamed “Tigris” to eventually compete with Nvidia, traveling to the Middle East to raise 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 chips. In December, the United States forced the venture capital firm backed by Saudi Aramco to sell its shares in Rain.
