Microsoft has recruited former OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman.
Altman was terminated from OpenAI on Friday due to the board’s loss of confidence in his leadership. Following a weekend of negotiations to possibly reinstate Altman at OpenAI, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed that both Sam Altman and Greg Brockman would be heading Microsoft’s new advanced AI research team.
Nadella said:
We’re extremely excited to share the news that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, together with colleagues, will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team. We look forward to moving quickly to provide them with the resources needed for their success.
While replying to Nadella’s announcement, Altman said “the mission continues” in his own tweet. Nadella added more to the thread, announcing Altman as the CEO of this new AI group, which would include Brockman and other colleagues from OpenAI.
The news comes shortly after OpenAI announced its new interim CEO after Mira Murati, Emmett Shear after talks of bringing back Altman fell through. Shear stepped down as the CEO of streaming site Twitch earlier this year. This marks the third CEO of OpenAI within three days.
Shear had reportedly been able to win over OpenAI’s board due to his acknowledgments of the potential dangers of AI. The board, which had abruptly doubled down on Altman’s firing also made a rapid search for a replacement CEO after Murati and settled for Shear.
According to reports from The New York Times, Altman had been presenting a separate startup concept to investors, aiming to develop custom AI Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) chips as rivals to Nvidia’s offerings. The TPU project, codenamed “Tigris,” garnered attention from several prominent venture firms and even drew interest from Microsoft.