OpenAI on Friday announced its new board of directors and the conclusion of an internal investigation by US law firm WilmerHale into the events that led to the ouster of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Sam Altman will also join OpenAI’s board.
The new board members are:
- Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who also serves on Pfizer’s board of directors and the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
- Nicole Seligman, former EVP and Global General Counsel of Sony and President of Sony Entertainment, who also serves on the Board of Directors of Paramount Global, Meira GTx and Intuitive Machines, Inc.
- Fidji Simo, CEO and president of Instacart, who also serves on the board of directors of Shopify.
The three new members “will work closely with current board members Adam D’Angelo, Larry Summers and Bret Taylor, as well as Greg, Sam and senior management at OpenAI,” according to a release.
OpenAI will continue to expand its board of directors moving forward, according to a Zoom call with reporters.
“The review concluded that there was a significant breakdown of trust between the previous board and Sam and Greg,” Taylor said, adding that the review also “concluded that the board acted in good faith… [and] did not foresee some of the instability that later brought.”
Taylor also said that the board’s concerns did not arise over product safety, OpenAI’s finances, or statements to customers or business partners, that it was “simply a breakdown of trust between the board and Mr. Altman.”
WilmerHale’s investigation began in December, and lawyers presented their report today, which included dozens of interviews with former OpenAI board members and advisors, current executives and other witnesses. According to a statement, the investigation also involved the review of more than 30,000 documents.
“We unanimously concluded that Sam and Greg are the right leaders for OpenAI,” Bret Taylor, chairman of OpenAI’s board of directors, said in a statement.
“I’m very grateful to Bret, Larry and WilmerHale,” Altman said on the Zoom call with reporters. He added, speaking of CTO Mira Murati, “Mira in particular is constantly engaged at OpenAI… but during that period in November she did an extraordinary job helping lead the company.”
She added that she is “excited to move forward here” and that the situation is “over.” He also said he wished he had acted differently regarding differences of opinion with the board.
In November, OpenAI’s board of directors ousted Altman, prompting resignations — or threats of resignation — including an open letter signed by virtually all OpenAI employees, and outcry from investors, including Microsoft. Within a week, Altman was back at the company and board members Helen Toner, Tasha McCauley and Ilya Sutskever, who had voted to oust Altman, were out. Adam D’Angelo, who had also voted to oust Altman, remained on the board.
When Altman was asked about Sutskever’s status during the Zoom call with reporters, he said there were no updates to share.
“I love Ilya… I hope we work together for the rest of our careers, my career, whatever,” Altman said. “Nothing to announce today.”
Since then, OpenAI has announced new board members, including former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. Microsoft obtained a non-voting board observer position.
After ChatGPT launched in November 2022, it broke records at the time as the fastest-growing consumer app in history and now has approximately 100 million weekly active users, along with more than 92% of Fortune 500 companies using the platform , according to OpenAI. Last year, Microsoft invested another $10 billion in the company, making it the largest AI investment of the year, according to PitchBook, and OpenAI reportedly closed a deal that will allow employees to sell shares at a valuation of $86 billion dollars, although the deal reportedly took longer to close than expected due to events surrounding Altman’s ouster.
The roller coaster of a couple of weeks at the company is still impacting the situation months later.
This month, billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk sued OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman for breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty, court filings revealed Thursday.
In his complaint, Musk and his lawyers argue that the maker of ChatGPT “has been transformed into a de facto closed-source subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft.” They also argue that this deal goes against a 2015 charter agreement and certification of incorporation that OpenAI established with Musk, who was a key donor to an OpenAI cofounder in its early years.
As part of Microsoft’s contract with OpenAI, the tech giant only has rights to OpenAI’s “pre-AGI” technology, and it is up to OpenAI’s board of directors to determine whether the company has reached this milestone. Musk argued in his statement that since the reshuffle of OpenAI’s board of directors in November – when Toner, McCauley and Sutskever were removed – the new board is “ill-equipped” to independently determine whether OpenAI has achieved AGI and therefore if its technology is outside the scope of OpenAI. the exclusivity agreement with Microsoft.
Lawyers told CNBC they have doubts about the legal feasibility of Musk’s case, and OpenAI said it plans to file a motion to dismiss all of Musk’s claims.
In response to the high-profile lawsuit, OpenAI reproduced old emails from Musk in which the Tesla and SpaceX CEO encouraged the emerging startup to raise at least $1 billion in funding and agreed that it should “start being less open” over time and “not share” the company’s science with the public.
Musk’s lawsuit also follows some controversy over Altman’s previous efforts and investments in the chip field.
Shortly before Altman’s brief ouster, he was reportedly seeking billions for a new and not yet formed chip venture code-named “Tigris” to possibly compete with Nvidia, traveling to the Middle East to raise money from investors.
In 2018, Altman personally invested in an AI chip startup called Rain Neuromorphics, based near OpenAI’s headquarters in San Francisco, and in 2019 OpenAI signed a letter of intent to spend $51 million on Rain’s chips. In December, the United States forced a Saudi Aramco-backed venture capital firm to sell its shares in Rain.