In a move that’s sending shockwaves through the tech world, OpenAI’s board has decided to oust its high-profile CEO, Sam Altman, marking a dramatic shift at the helm of one of the industry’s most influential AI firms. Mira Murati, previously the Chief Technology Officer at OpenAI, steps into the breach as interim CEO. This leadership change, announced in a blog post by OpenAI, comes amid revelations of Altman’s purported lack of transparency in dealings with the board.
The board’s loss of confidence in Altman’s leadership paints a stark contrast to his public persona as a tech visionary and AI evangelist. Altman, one of the founders of Y-Combinator, is a well respected member of the startup community. When open AI started in 2015, he and Elon Musk were both advisors. In 2020 Altman moved into the CEO role. Altman steered this San Francisco-based venture to heights that made it the envy of Silicon Valley stalwarts like Google and Meta. Under his watch, OpenAI evolved from a fledgling startup to a tech juggernaut, buoyed by billions in Microsoft funding and at the forefront of AI innovation.
At Open AI’s first “developer day,” just two weeks ago, Altman gave a keynote filled with blockbuster announcements, unveiling new features, upgrades, and price reductions that will strongly influence the development of a new category of software. The new OpenAI’s GPT Builder will allow anyone to customize and share their own AI assistants (GPTs), which creators can sell to other users in OpenAI’s new GPT store. You can add advanced custom instructions to your GPTs, including files, descriptions, and actions, and sell them to other users, with OpenAI taking a 50%. GPT-4 Turbo, OpenAI’s new LLM with an upgraded 128K context window that allows it to read prompts as long as a 300-page book, was introduced. The company is lowering its API pricing. OpenAI has also introduced a new legal defense fund that will indemnify its users from copyright infringement claims.
OpenAI stands on the cusp of a new funding round that could see its valuation soar to over $80 billion, nearly tripling in less than a year, but they will do so without the man who was its driving force. The appointment of Mira Murati as interim CEO heralds a new chapter, with questions looming about the direction OpenAI will take in this rapidly evolving AI landscape. Meanwhile, Greg Brockman, another co-founder, steps back as chairman but remains president, reporting to the new CEO.
This news is forty minutes old as I write this. There is more, much more, to this story.
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