In 48 hours, the company that is the dream of all of Silicon Valley saw its star dim. With the launch of ChatGPT in 2022 and the billions Microsoft invested in 2023, OpenAI had become the start-up that is setting the tone for the new world, that of generative artificial intelligence. Friday, November 17, thunderbolt: its boss and co-founder Sam Altman was dismissed from his position with immediate effect by the board of directors. The two days that followed were marked by the greatest confusion.
The tone of OpenAI’s press release deploring “a lack of frankness” from Sam Altman towards the council was, it is true, more offensive than usual in this type of situation. The fact that the entity initially created as a non-profit organization made a major shift in 2019, by creating a for-profit subsidiary which will experience meteoric growth, seems to be the primary source of this profound split. That such a change of direction questions part of the team is legitimate: it has a major impact on the nature of the developments carried out, the speed of product launches and the security measures planned to support them. The way in which the “coup d’état” took place at OpenAI will, however, permanently harm it.
Microsoft’s nice move
The decision to dismiss Sam Altman is indeed far from unanimous internally. Another co-founder of OpenAI, Greg Brockman, was initially asked to keep his position despite losing his title of chairman of the board of directors. However, he immediately decided to resign, quickly followed by senior researchers at the company. Many OpenAI employees, including Mira Murati, who was briefly named interim CEO, posted messages of support for Sam Altman on X.
Despite being a key partner of OpenAI, Microsoft has been kept in the dark and has been scrambling over the weekend to try to reinstate Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. Without success. But the story does not end there. This Monday, November 20, on the social network Satya Nadella revealed “that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, along with several colleagues, were joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team.” Once the smoke has cleared, it’s a hard wake-up call for OpenAI, which is counting its losses. Microsoft, for its part, succeeded in a magnificent poker move in the middle of a cataclysm.