Source: New Wisdom Element
Image source: Generated by Wujie AI
The board has been embarrassed! Altman, the crowd's favorite, makes a triumphant return, showing up at the headquarters of OpenAI with a visitor badge and demanding the board's dissolution. The CEO's road to revenge has taken a dramatic turn, and the two sides are still at odds.
It took Steve Jobs 12 years to make a comeback from being ousted, while Sam Altman did it in just two days.
Now, Altman has returned to OpenAI in a victorious manner to discuss his future with the company, and has made new demands of the board—
"Replace the current board members and obtain a statement proving my innocence."
In simple terms, I can come back, but you have to go.
Interim CEO Mira Murati, Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon, and Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap have all sided with Altman, hoping the board will resign.
The directors have conceded, agreeing in principle to resign, but have not yet formally done so, as they are evaluating new board members.
As of the time of publication, both sides are still at a standoff. But Altman should already have the upper hand.
"The Road to Return of the King"
Local time on Sunday, six hours ago, Sam Altman posted a photo of himself wearing an OpenAI visitor badge entering the building, frowning with a complex look in his eyes, and added this line—
This is my first and last time wearing an OpenAI visitor badge.
At the same time Altman was dismissed, OpenAI President Greg Brockman also resigned and negotiated with OpenAI alongside Altman.
Last Saturday, the four-person board that ruthlessly kicked out Altman had a change of heart on Sunday, begging Altman to return to OpenAI.
The reason is partly the pressure from the major investors, and also the overwhelming support from a large number of employees.
The board has made concessions, but Altman may not necessarily accept them.
Now, he has many options. If he returns to OpenAI, he will demand the establishment of a new board; or, he may even start a new company with a large number of willing former employees.
From this, it can be seen that what truly makes Altman irreplaceable is the unwavering loyalty of the top scientists at OpenAI.
They are the backbone of OpenAI and the core contributors to ChatGPT.
The Wrath of the Major Investors
According to Bloomberg, Microsoft CEO Nadella is very angry about the board's actions. It is reported that he has been in contact with Altman since the incident broke out and has promised to support him.
It is worth noting that Microsoft is the largest investor in OpenAI, having invested $13 billion and owning 49% of OpenAI Global LLC.
At the same time, OpenAI's major venture capital supporters, including its second-largest shareholder Thrive Capital, Tiger Global, Khosla Ventures, and Sequoia Capital, have all expressed their hope for Altman's return.
And regardless of what Altman decides to do next, they will support him.
This inevitably brings to mind another famous event in Silicon Valley—
It is well known that Steve Jobs was fired from the company he founded, Apple, in 1985.
He then founded NeXT, a company that produced high-end computers. At that time, Apple was already struggling.
In 1997, Jobs officially returned. Soon, he transformed Apple from a struggling tech company into a global giant.
Employee Statements
Another co-founder, OpenAI President and Chairman of the Board Greg Brockman, resigned immediately and firmly stated that he and Altman are in this together.
As the situation escalated, Altman tweeted, "I love the OpenAI team too much."
At the same time, a large number of core employees and executives at OpenAI retweeted Altman's tweet, expressing their support with heart emojis.
The support of these core OpenAI employees for Altman seems to be telling the board that if they let him go, OpenAI is likely to face a large exodus of employees.
And these people are the backbone of OpenAI, the company that has become the most eye-catching in the tech industry and has the potential to change the future of the tech industry.
To reassure employees, after negotiations for Altman and Brockman's return, OpenAI executives stated in a memo sent to employees that they are "very optimistic" about Altman and Brockman's return.
The Board is in Hot Water
Currently, the biggest obstacle in Altman's negotiations for his return is that he hopes to dissolve the board that fired him and bring in new board members.
In response, the original board may have to issue a new statement overturning the original decision to fire Altman and exonerating him.
In doing so, they not only put themselves in hot water, but also give everyone reason to question the "legitimacy" of the board.
According to foreign media reports, if the board is indeed restructured, new board members may include:
Former Co-CEO of Salesforce Inc., Bret Taylor.
And another executive from Microsoft.
As for whether OpenAI's Chief Scientist Ilya, who was instrumental in the board's decision to dismiss Altman, can continue to remain on the board, that remains to be seen.
After all, the conflict lies in the fact that the recent developer conference clearly demonstrated Altman's business ambitions, while the board members, especially Ilya, have concerns about the safety of AI.
In response, Musk also took the opportunity to express support for Ilya, indirectly expressing doubts about Altman.
I am very concerned.
Ilya has a good moral compass and is not a power-hungry person.
He would not take such radical action unless he believed it was absolutely necessary.
Although the board is still hesitating, if Altman does decide to start a new company, there will undoubtedly be a large number of employees who will remain loyal and follow him.
TL;DR
In summary, in just a few days, OpenAI has experienced a series of earth-shattering upheavals—
- OpenAI announced the dismissal of Sam Altman as CEO and Greg Brockman as Chairman of the Board.
- CTO Mira Murati was appointed as interim CEO.
- Shortly after, Brockman also posted that he had resigned.
- Altman and Brockman issued a joint statement expressing "shock and sadness" at the board's actions.
- Three senior researchers, Jakob Pachocki, Aleksander Madry, and Szymon Sidor, resigned in protest.
- It is understood that Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever played a key role in the decision to dismiss Altman.
- The next day, under pressure, OpenAI seemed to want Altman to return as CEO.
- In response, Altman made his own conditions, including demanding the resignation of the board members who fired him. The board is still undecided.
- According to reports, if no agreement is reached, there may be a mass exodus of employees.
Altman Intends to Establish a New AI Company
According to sources, Altman is planning to establish a new artificial intelligence company, and former OpenAI President Greg Brockman is expected to join the company.
However, the specifics of this company are not yet clear.
At the same time, more details about Altman's ambitions in developing artificial intelligence have emerged.
Not long ago, he had discussions with semiconductor executives, including those from chip design company Arm, on how to design new chips as soon as possible to reduce costs for companies like OpenAI that use large language models.
According to Bloomberg, the chip company Altman plans to establish will create artificial intelligence chips similar to Google's TPU (Tensor Processing Unit).
For this purpose, Altman has been raising funds in the Middle East for the project codenamed Tigris.
Custom-designed chips like TPU are believed to one day surpass the artificial intelligence accelerators made by Nvidia. Artificial intelligence companies are eager for them, but developing an AI chip requires a huge amount of time and resources.
However, the company has not yet been established, and negotiations with investors are still in the early stages.
But regardless of the form the new company takes, Altman and Brockman can avoid the problems currently facing OpenAI.
In addition to this chip company, Altman has also been raising funds for a hardware device for artificial intelligence that he is developing in collaboration with former Apple design chief Jony Ive.
According to a source, in recent months, Altman has regularly attended dinners at the California Woodside mansion of Masayoshi Son, discussing the future of artificial intelligence, chips, and other technology topics with other tech executives, including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
Perhaps Altman's ambitions and side projects have made his already tense relationship with the board even more complicated.
Competitors Eager to Poach Talent
As soon as Altman left, competitors such as Cohere and Adept have begun poaching employees from OpenAI, and Google's DeepMind has also received new resumes from OpenAI employees.
These actions indicate the risks OpenAI faces after Altman's departure: the resignation of the four executives could trigger a series of resignations, making it difficult to maintain the rapid growth of last year.
As Altman considers returning, many executives are also considering returning.
Adept is a startup valued at $1 billion, and it is creating an artificial intelligence model that can perform tasks on users' computers.
A representative of the company contacted several current engineers and researchers at OpenAI within 24 hours of Altman's dismissal.
According to a source, some OpenAI employees applied to Google's artificial intelligence lab, DeepMind, within hours of the board's statement announcing Altman's dismissal.
OpenAI's main startup competitors have posted a job posting on LinkedIn, stating that they are hiring several technical project managers.
Aidan Gomez, co-founder and CEO of Cohere, posted a link on the company's recruitment page, indicating that the company is hiring "machine learning engineers."
Amjad Masad, founder and CEO of the code generation startup Replit, also posted a link to the company's recruitment page three hours after OpenAI announced the leadership changes.
——Looks like adding insult to injury? But this kind of poaching is probably common for companies like OpenAI.
OpenAI was founded in 2015 and currently has over 700 employees, some of whom were recruited from major tech companies like Google, Meta, and Stripe.
Last year, they hired some high-profile employees, including Andrej Karpathy, former head of Tesla's autonomous driving division, and Emma Redmond, former head of privacy and data protection at Stripe.
According to sources, OpenAI recently attracted Google employees by offering stock packages worth millions of dollars.
It is no exaggeration to say that Altman played a key role in recruiting talent from other companies.
Netizens Enjoying the Show
Microsoft is making a big push behind the scenes, so let's see who calls the shots at OpenAI now.
Altman has played his final trump card, the "power transfer card"!
Same posture, same outcome, just much more efficient than Altman.
A scene similar to when Mr. Ma acquired Twitter a year ago is playing out again!
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