updated with comments from OpenAI’s incoming CEO
One of the biggest controversies in the technology space unfolded Friday and it continues to play out with several twists and turns.
What Happened: Open AI board named former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear as the company’s new top brass after Mira Murati, the interim CEO it named on Friday, aligned with her predecessor Sam Altman, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
Shear gave up the CEO post at Amazon-owned video game-centric live streaming platform Twitch in March. “A computer scientist who spent more than a decade building Twitch into one of the world's most successful video platforms, Shear is regarded as having the heft to lead a large engineering group,” the source who broke out the news to Bloomberg told.
The development comes even as reports said Murati was negotiating with the OpenAI board to bring back Altman and ex-President Greg Brockman. Specifically, Murati was in talks with Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo, who acted as representative for OpenAI board, a separate Bloomberg report said
The board was reportedly in talks with at least two potential candidates from the tech industry who could replace Murati.
Shear has since then confirmed his appointment. “Today I got a call inviting me to consider a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to become the interim CEO of @OpneAI, After consulting with my family and reflecting on it for just a few hours, I accepted,” he said. He also outlined a three-point plan for OpenAI for the next 30 days.
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Why It’s Important: Incidentally, several OpenAI investors, including Microsoft Corp. MSFT, which made a $10 billion bet in the privately-held startup in return for using its large-language model in its software and applications, as well as employees threw their weight behind Altman.
Altman was unceremoniously sacked on Friday in a board room coup led by fellow co-founder and board member Ilya Sutskever. Sutskever serves as OpenAI’s chief scientist. The board reasoned that Altman was not transparent in his communications with the board.
Following Altman’s ouster, Brockman, who was one of the co-founders, decided to step down as well.
Rumors suggest that Altman’s efforts to set up an AI chip startup might have led to the unsavory developments. He reportedly sought funding from Middle East investors as well as SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son for the venture.
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