Microsoft has hired OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman to head up a “new advanced AI research team,” the software conglomerate’s chief Satya Nadella said Monday, capping three days of intense discussions following the unexpected decision by OpenAI’s board to dismiss Altman.
Many OpenAI members, including the co-founder Brockman, left the firm in protest last week. Nadella said Altman and Brockman will be joined by “colleagues,” suggesting that Microsoft is also hiring more talent that left OpenAI over the weekend.
“We look forward to moving quickly to provide them with the resources needed for their success,” said Nadella, in what many tech entrepreneurs labelled as an example of “incredible execution.”
Altman has been the public face of OpenAI, the most valuable U.S. startup. It’s not only widely estimated to be leading the current AI race but has in less than a year also assumed the position of kingmaker for thousands of other startups that are building atop of its software offerings. Investment in OpenAI has also supercharged Microsoft’s AI efforts, helping it court many businesses and provide Wall Street with adequate confidence about the decades-old software giant’s future prospects.
Microsoft’s move comes after a tumultuous weekend that saw an unsuccessful attempt by the OpenAI board, its investors, team members and Altman to make the entrepreneur return to the startup. OpenAI board instead elected to hire former Twitch chief executive and co-founder Emmett Shear as its interim chief executive in a move that reportedly shocked Altman. OpenAI didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Earlier over the weekend, Altman also began to pitch a new AI venture to investors, according to the New York Times.
The OpenAI board said it had removed Altman because he had not been “consistently candid” in his conversations with them. It didn’t elaborate the reasoning, which angered many OpenAI employees. “The board had a chance to explain their drastic actions and they did not take it,” wrote Andrej Karpathy, a research scientist at OpenAI, on X.
Source: TechCrunch
