It's becoming clearer that Sam Altman was removed as CEO because of governance structures (maybe working as intended?) and not "performance" in ANY typical sense.
"We can say definitively that the board's decision was not made in response to malfeasance or anything related to our financial, business, safety, or security/privacy practices", from an OpenAI exec to all employees.
He wasn't fired because OpenAI was necessarily doing "poorly" (indicators show 200M MAUs, >$1B in ARR, and unique tech) -- he was fired because his Board wasn't "aligned" with Sam.
A "board of directors" for companies are (sometimes) a random assortment of people. In this case, they held disproportionate power at OpenAI and perhaps felt that Sam was not taking the risks of AI as seriously as needed.
Satya Nadella, Microsoft, Investors, and of course, Sam, were blindsided by the decision.
Knowing how much of OpenAI's inherent value lies in its co-founders (Sam + Greg), part of me is curious if Satya (CEO of a $3T company, and who OpenAI relies on to exist in some sense) steps in to protect what has uniquely been built here. Just 24H later, I don't think it's too late for the situation to be salvaged.
Because the alternative might be -- Sam raises $1B overnight, attracts top talent immediately (from OpenAI and outside), re-creates a better version of OpenAI, and leaves the $15B in MSFT investment worth significantly less than it was last week.
