Microsoft has pledged to match the salary of any employees leaving OpenAI, which is in dire straits.
Following his contentious dismissal as CEO on Friday, Sam Altman received an offer to head “a new advanced AI research team” at Microsoft.
Nearly all of OpenAI’s employees have vowed to quit if he and co-founder Greg Brockman are not given their jobs back.
Whether Mr. Altman will eventually join Microsoft, by far the largest investment in OpenAI, is still up in the air.
According to OpenAI engineering manager Evan Morikawa, 743 out of 770 workers have signed a letter urging the board to step down, and if their requests are not fulfilled, they have threatened to quit.
According to their letter, they had received employment offers from Microsoft. The company’s chief technology officer, Kevin Scott, has now verified this, informing employees that they will be employed by Microsoft “if needed” for a position that “matches your compensation”.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told CNBC that Mr. Altman might not be coming and that he was “committed to OpenAI and Sam, irrespective of what configuration,” adding to the uncertainty around people’s fates.
“Obviously, that depends on the people at OpenAI staying there or coming to Microsoft, so I’m open to both options,” he stated.
Mr. Nadella stated to CNBC on Monday that “something has to change” at OpenAI, the company that created the ChatGPT chatbot. However, he did not elaborate on or rule out the possibility of the tech giant being appointed to the board.
Microsoft has a strong stake in the company and uses its technology extensively in other products, but its relationship with OpenAI has not yet reached the boardroom.
“At this point, I think it’s very, very clear that something has to change around the governance,” Mr. Nadella stated.
“We’ll have a good dialogue with their board on that.”
In a series of appearances with the media, the Microsoft CEO maintained a composed expression, in contrast to the chaos at OpenAI, where employees are openly protesting Mr. Altman’s departure.
It’s still unclear exactly what is happening with the company’s previous top executive, but they have requested that he return and that the board be removed.
Partner at Air Street Capital, which has made investments in several AI startups, Nathan Benaich, commended Mr. Nadella for his choices made following Mr. Altman’s termination.
He declared, “This is amazing deal-making.”
“Microsoft is now in an even more advantageous position. It has the balance sheet, the two OpenAI leaders, the capacity to draw in talent, and it’s spending $50 billion constructing an incredible computer infrastructure.
“This is larger than some of the most ambitious government-funded research projects.”
Emmett Shear, the former CEO of Twitch who was appointed as the new acting CEO of OpenAI following Mr. Altman’s abrupt resignation, is in the midst of all of this.
When the two participated in the start-up funding program Y Combinator years ago, their paths met, and a social media snapshot of them together went viral.
The photo includes several others who went on to great careers in tech, including Aaron Swartz, a celebrated internet freedom activist and early developer of the website Reddit, who died in 2013.
Mr. Shear co-founded the hit gaming site Twitch and led it to become the dominant live-streaming website in the world before selling the business to Amazon for an estimated $970 million (£774 million) in 2014.
He remained as CEO under Amazon but left in March 2023, following the birth of his son.
But some of the tweets he has sent since leaving the firm have caused him to come under scrutiny online, including his public criticism of Microsoft.
Neither Mr. Shear nor OpenAI have responded to a request for comment.
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