Key players in OpenAI’s boardroom drama
On November 17, Silicon Valley was thrown into turmoil when Sam Altman, CEO of the high-profile AI start-up OpenAI, was suddenly fired by the company’s board of directors. After a five-day rollercoaster ride that encapsulated the increasingly heated battle over the future of artificial intelligence, Mr. Altman was reinstated and a new board was established. Here’s a list of players in the year’s biggest tech drama:
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO and Founder: Mr. Altman co-founded OpenAI with Elon Musk and several others as a nonprofit lab in 2015 while he was president of Y Combinator, a powerful Silicon Valley startup incubator. He took over as CEO in 2018, paired the lab with a for-profit company and quickly raised $1 billion in funding from Microsoft.
Greg Brockman, president and founder of OpenAI: After leaving the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr. Brockman became chief technology officer at Stripe, an online payments company that Mr. Altman helped develop. He was one of the 12 founders of OpenAI and said the lab would build AI that was free from the corporate pressures that drove Google and other tech giants.
Ilya Sutskever, Chief Scientist and Founder of OpenAI: Dr. Sutskever was one of three researchers at the University of Toronto who launched the AI boom in 2012 when they published a paper showing that machines could learn to identify objects in images with surprising accuracy. After joining Google, he defected to co-found OpenAI with Mr. Altman, Mr. Brockman and others.
Mira Murati, Chief Technology Officer of OpenAI: Ms. Murati joined OpenAI in 2018 and later became Chief Technology Officer. When four OpenAI board members – Dr. Sutskever, Adam D’Angelo, Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley – decided to fire Mr. Altman as CEO, they asked Ms. Murati to serve briefly as interim director.
Adam D’Angelo, OpenAI board member: As a student at Phillips Exeter Academy, he built an online music player together with Mark Zuckerberg, the future founder of Facebook. After serving as Facebook’s Chief Technology Officer from 2006 to 2008, he founded the question-and-answer site Quora. He joined OpenAI’s board of directors in 2018 and remains CEO of Quora.
Helen Toner, former board member of OpenAI: Ms. Toner joined the board in 2021. She identifies as an effective altruist and is part of a community of people who believe AI could one day destroy humanity. She is also director of strategy at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, a think tank, where she writes on national security issues. She left the board as part of the agreement to bring Mr. Altman back to the company.
Tasha McCauley, former OpenAI board member: Ms. McCauley is a deputy senior management scientist at the RAND Corporation, one of the country’s oldest think tanks, and is a member of the UK board of Effective Ventures, a federation of organizations committed to effective altruism. In 2015, she attended a groundbreaking AI safety summit in Puerto Rico with Musk and others. She also left OpenAI’s board when Mr. Altman returned.
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft: Mr. Nadella ran into Mr. Altman in 2018 at the Sun Valley Conference, often called “summer camp for billionaires.” In the year that followed, Mr. Nadella and Microsoft agreed to invest $1 billion in OpenAI. Since then, they have invested another $12 billion.
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky: Mr. Chesky’s company is another technology start-up that Mr. Altman helped develop. After Mr. Altman was kicked out of OpenAI — and decided he would find a way to return to the company — Mr. Chesky was one of many friends and colleagues who helped make it happen.
Emmett Shear, former CEO of Twitch: Mr. Shear founded Justin.tv, another startup, Mr. Altman, helped incubate. He later became CEO of Twitch, a company that emerged from Justin.tv. He is among those who believe that AI could one day destroy humanity. Mr. Shear also briefly served as interim director of OpenAI.
Bret Taylor, new chairman of OpenAI: Mr. Taylor is the former co-chief executive of Salesforce.com and another former chief technology officer of Facebook. He was also the chairman of Twitter when Mr Musk bought it. As part of the agreement to return Mr. Altman to OpenAI, Mr. Taylor joined OpenAI’s board and took over as chairman.
Lawrence H. Summers, new OpenAI board member: Mr. Summers is one of the nation’s leading economists. He served as Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration and has been vocal about AI’s potential to displace workers. But his reputation has been damaged over the years. When he was president of Harvard, he said that women might not have an intrinsic aptitude for math and science.
Ron Conway, Silicon Valley investor: Mr. Conway is a well-known venture capitalist and longtime friend of Mr. Altman. Together with Mr. Chesky, he helped convince Mr. Altman to find his way back to OpenAI. This week, he sent a text message to Mr Altman urging him to silence speculation about why he was removed from the OpenAI board.