Author: Qi Minqian, Huxiu Commercial Consumer Group
On the afternoon of November 17th, US time, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, announced a major management adjustment. Sam Altman will resign as CEO and leave the company's board of directors. Mira Murati, the company's chief technology officer, will serve as interim CEO. The official CEO is still being searched.
As one of the founders of OpenAI, Sam Altman is known as the "Father of ChatGPT" and has always been the one standing in front of the stage to represent OpenAI.
Since he was so closely tied to OpenAI, why did Sam Altman leave suddenly? The reason OpenAI gave in the announcement was: Altman's resignation was decided after the board of directors reviewed it. He was not candid enough in communicating with the board of directors, which hindered the board of directors' ability to perform its duties. The board of directors has lost confidence in Altman's leadership of OpenAI.
Screenshot from the official website
In response to the above adjustments, Altman made a simple response on his social media. The gist is that he loves his time at OpenAI... and will explain his next plans later.
What are the backgrounds of the new and old CEOs?
Altman, the former CEO of OpenAI, is considered a "celebrity" in the global technology community. In 2005, the 19-year-old Altman dropped out of Stanford University after studying computer science for a year. After that, he started his own business and became a partner of the famous American startup incubator, Y Combinator, in 2011. Later, he became the president of the YC Group. During his time as the president of YC, he established YC China and invited Lu Qi to serve as CEO.
In 2015, Altman, Musk, Greg Brockman and others co-founded OpenAI, which aims to build safe and beneficial general artificial intelligence for the benefit of mankind. In 2019, YC announced that in order to allow Altman to focus on OpenAI, his position in YC changed from president to chairman of the board.
Mira Murati, who temporarily replaces Altman this time, has a less deep connection with OpenAI than Altman, and his role in the company is relatively marginal. According to foreign media reports, Mira was promoted to CTO of OpenAI in 2022, responsible for overseeing the commercialization of OpenAI products and improving them through user feedback.
According to OpenAI's announcement, Mira has been with the company's leadership team for five years and has a deep understanding of the company's values, operations and business. Mira was chosen as interim CEO mainly because of her long tenure, close contact with all aspects of the company, and rich experience in artificial intelligence governance.
The six-member board of directors becomes a four-member board of directors
As a non-profit organization, the board of directors is the overall management body of OpenAI. After this management change, its board of directors will temporarily change from the original six-member board to the current four-member board.
According to OpenAI's official website, there were 6 people on the OpenAI board of directors, 3 of whom were current employees and 3 of whom were non-current employees. The three current employees on the board are: Chairman and President Greg Brockman, former CEO Altman, and Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever.
After this management turmoil, OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, like Altman, was also "asked out" of the board of directors. He then announced that he would leave OpenAI completely and would no longer serve in the company.
According to OpenAI's latest announcement, there are only four people left on the company's board of directors, namely chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and three other non-active external board members.
Screenshot from the official website
The sudden management turmoil at OpenAI has caused a lot of debate about the company's internal positions and factions. Although there is no conclusion to the various speculations, one thing is certain: OpenAI, which is at the forefront of artificial intelligence, still has a lot of room for improvement in corporate management.
In addition to internal management capabilities, another major controversy about OpenAI comes from the conflict between non-profit and commercialization. When OpenAI was first established in 2015, it has always aimed to be a non-profit organization. However, researching AI technology and applications is, after all, a project that requires a lot of capital investment. When OpenAI started, it adopted a donation model, initially receiving a $1 billion donation commitment from YC and others, and later received a total donation of about $130 million.
But these donations could not meet OpenAI's needs. In 2019, the company designed a "profit cap" structure, established a new for-profit subsidiary under the non-profit organization, and received investment from Microsoft.
Affected by the shocking news at the top of OpenAI, Microsoft's US stock price plunged in late trading and eventually closed down nearly 1.7%. Microsoft announced that it has a long-term cooperative relationship with OpenAI, abides by its investment commitment to OpenAI, and has "great confidence" in OpenAI.
