The exodus of OpenAI executives continues. Tuesday evening, the iconic CTO Mira Murati announced https://twitter.com/miramurati/status/1839025700009030027which adds to those of two other lesser-known executives in the research teams. Present at the Italian Tech Week in Turin on Wednesday, the company’s CEO Sam Altman immediately addressed this new wave of departures.
Echoing his message published on happy to train and support a new generation of leaders “. But above all, he confirms his growing involvement in current affairs, after years of distance. “ I’ve never been more involved in company tech and I can’t wait to dive in. », he enthuses, specifying that six new executives recently appointed will be in direct contact with him.
More than ever, OpenAI is Sam Altman’s company. A turn discussed with the board of directors for almost a year », says the entrepreneur. At that time, in November 2023, he returned to his position as CEO, a week after being suddenly fired, after a scenario worthy of Hollywood. This episode had confirmed the victory of his vision for the company, capitalist and focused on the need to gradually release products; facing the historic one of OpenAI, which aims to create superintelligence to help humanity above all. “ We started delivering great products, we’re going to deliver even better products », insists Sam Altman at Italian Tech Week. According to Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journalthe manager’s takeover of operational power could be accompanied by an increase in the company’s capital, to more than 7%, thanks to a change in social status.
How OpenAI plans to widen the gap with its rivals again
Sam Altman, unique visage d’OpenAI
Of the four members of the famous photo of the OpenAI management team published in the New York Times in March 2023, only Altman kept his position. Scientific mastermind Ilya Sutskever walked out at the start of the year after his involvement in the CEO’s dismissal. Then President Greg Brockman started a sabbatical this summer, which will extend at least until the end of the year. As for the last part, Mira Murati, she was very involved in the daily operation of the company for more than six years. She had also assumed the role of interim CEO during Altman’s layoff, and in May, she presented ChatGPT’s stunning new vocal capabilities alone on stage.
Sam Altman therefore remains the only known face of OpenAI. Of the eleven members of the company’s founding team in 2015, only him, Brockman and Wojciech Zaremba remain, a shadowy man in charge of AI intended for coding. However, despite this managerial instability, OpenAI continues to keep its unofficial title of number one in AI. At the beginning of the month, the start-up presented o1, a new type of AI model with unprecedented reasoning capabilities, eagerly awaited by the sector.
This week, it deployed the new capabilities of the voice assistant integrated into ChatGPT, except in Europe which should be affected in a second phase. Its search engine, SearchGPT, still in the testing phase (alpha), should also be added to the chatbot in the short term. More generally, Sam Altman’s vision focused on products is starting to take shape.
In the medium term, OpenAI should also launch a reworked version of its video-generating AI Sora, as well as a tool intended for building agents, AIs capable of carrying out complex tasks, considered the Holy Grail of the sector. “ I think companies have moved beyond curiosity about generative AI. Our role is now to build the best APIs [les interfaces qui permettent aux entreprises d’utiliser les outils d’OpenAI, NDLR] and the best software for the general public, so that users get value from it », extends Sam Altman at Italian Tech Week.
7% of OpenAI for Sam Altman
According to the American press, this strategic shift could be accompanied by a change in the status of OpenAI. Until now, the start-up kept its initial non-profit structure, which corresponded to its first mission of “ create AI in the service of humanity », in open science. But since 2019 and the entry of Microsoft into the capital, it had developed a commercial arm. This change caused great tensions within the teams, and led to the departures of several executives who subsequently founded Anthropic, which became one of OpenAI’s main competitors.
This strange structure of the company then played a key role in the Sam Altman affair, since the board of directors behind his dismissal had not consulted the main shareholder (with 49% of the shares) at all. , Microsoft, before making your decision. The reason? He simply didn’t have to, even if in the end CEO Satya Nadella threw his weight around.
As a logical continuation of things, OpenAI would therefore consider taking on the for-profit status of “public benefit corporation”, which would translate into “public utility company”. Concretely, this status would oblige it to work for the common good and to act sustainably, a very distant objective for AI at the moment. Sam Altman would be in discussions to obtain 7% of the capital of this new structure, although he had no participation until now. When the start-up was created, he declared that he had enough money, in particular thanks to his fortune drawn from Y-Combinator, a famous Californian start-up incubator.
But before this big upheaval, OpenAI should complete a new fundraising round by the end of the year, around seven billion dollars, which would value it at more than 150 billion dollars. Led by Thrive Capital, it would also be powered by Microsoft, Apple and Nvidia, three close partners of the start-up.
