Former OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, will be leading “a new advanced AI research team” at Microsoft, revealed the software behemoth’s CEO, Satya Nadella, in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
“We’re extremely excited to share the news that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, together with colleagues, will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team. We look forward to moving quickly to provide them with the resources needed for their success.”
Altman will be joined by OpenAI’s co-founder and president, Greg Brockman, and other former staff members of the team. Brockman had announced his resignation shortly after Altman was ousted last week when the board said that it no longer had confidence in him to continue leading the company.
Microsoft is one of the largest investors in OpenAI. The recent development happened after Nadella’s failed effort to reinstate Sam Altman as CEO and replace the current board. Talking about the same, he said:
“We remain committed to our partnership with OpenAI and have confidence in our product roadmap, our ability to continue to innovate with everything we announced at Microsoft Ignite, and in continuing to support our customers and partners.”
Microsoft is now also looking forward to getting to know OpenAI’s new leadership team led by Emmett Shear, who has now replaced Altman as the CEO. Shear was the CEO of video-game-streaming platform Twitch until March this year.
He commented on the new development in a lengthy X post saying: “Today I got a call inviting me to consider a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to become the interim CEO of @OpenAI. After consulting with my family and reflecting on it for just a few hours, I accepted. I had recently resigned from my role as CEO of Twitch due to the birth of my now 9 month old son.”
The new OpenAI CEO has already released a three point plan for the next 30 days including things like hiring an independent investigator to dig into the entire process leading up to this point to generate a full report and reforming the existing management and leadership.
Adding on, he said: “Depending on the results of everything we learn from these, I will drive changes in the organisation — up to and including pushing strongly for significant governance changes if necessary. I will be rolling these out as they become clear over the 30 day period. OpenAI’s stability and success are too important to allow turmoil to disrupt them like this. I will endeavour to address the key concerns as well, although in many cases I believe it may take longer than a month to achieve true progress.”
Altman, on the other hand, just reposted Nadella’s announcement saying that “the mission continues” on his X account. He will now act as the CEO of the new group where the latter expects the top executive to “give founders and innovators space to build independent identities and cultures within Microsoft, including GitHub, Mojang Studios, and LinkedIn”.
Worldcoin ($WLD), which is the cryptocurrency of Altman’s other project known for its futuristic eye-scanning orb, rose by over 10% in response to this news. However, at the time of press, $WLD was down by over 4% daily, changing hands for $2.32 on exchanges.
