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. We look forward to getting to know Emmett Shear and OAI’s new leadership team and working with them. And 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.
News article covering the situation: https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/20/23968829/microsoft-hires-sam-altman-greg-brockman-employees-openai
Altman’s Microsoft hiring comes just hours after negotiations with OpenAI’s board failed to bring him back as OpenAI CEO. Instead, former Twitch CEO and co-founder Emmett Shear has been named as interim CEO.
Altman had been negotiating to return as OpenAI CEO, but OpenAI’s four-person board refused to step down and let him return.
I am skeptical that a lot of OpenAI staff are enthusiastic about going to work for Microsoft. They are going to scatter to the wind. Google, Anthropic, Cohere, everywhere.
Microsoft is matching key OpenAI employees equity with Microsoft stocks, which can be 10+ millions. https://www.semianalysis.com/p/microsoft-swallows-openais-core-team?r=13ehoo
Anrhropic is the one to watch
I think 95% of employees so far expressed support for Sam…
I think it’s entirely possible that OpenAI merges with Anthropic