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Open AI Aftermath: Reunification In The Works?

Yesterday’s big story was all about the amazing chess move by Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella. By swooping in literally minutes after negotiations between Sam Altman and the Open AI board broke down and offering Altman, Greg Brockman and literally any Open AI employee a job on an advanced AI research team, he gave Altman a safe landing place. At the same time, he publicly proclaimed that Microsoft was ready to work with Emmitt Shear, the new, new Interim CEO and honor their partnership. This move positioned Microsoft to stay engaged with all of Open AI’s key assets, ongoing business and personnel.

The second big story yesterday was the letter signed by over 90% of Open AI’s employees demanding that the board resign and reinstate Sam Altman or they would all join him at Microsoft.

Here’s where it gets interesting: it has been reported that Ilya Sutskever, Open AI’s Chief Scientist and board member also signed the letter. Since Sutskever was clearly involved in the board room coup and thought by many to be the leader, his signature on the letter represents a 180-degree turn for him. He posted this tweet yesterday:

With pressure from Microsoft, Open AI’s investors and staff, and Sutskever’s change of heart, as well as stories of Interim CEO Emmitt Shear’s questionable tweets, the winds apparently shifted back toward putting the band back together again. Late last night, The Information reported that “OpenAI executives plan to continue discussions with ousted CEO Sam Altman, interim CEO Emmett Shear and the startup’s board of directors on Tuesday morning as they work to “reunify” the company”, according to a memo circulated to employees.

And yesterday, Sam Altman tweeted this:

Today may well be the day that all the parties settle their differences and find a way to work together again. The big outstanding issues are:

1. What changes will be made to the board? Will any or all of the board members leave? Will Microsoft get a board seat? Will any investors get a board seat?

2. Will there be changes in the governance structure and the bylaws of the non-profit and for-profit entities? Will changes affect Open AI’s commitment to safety?

One still unanswered question is why Mira Murati was replaced by Emmitt Shear as Interim CEO. This was another decision by the board that seemed to be rushed and not fully vetted.

Another interesting report is that the board approached Anthropic about a possible merger last Friday.

Expect today to yield more interesting developments!

How much does all this drama hurt OpenAI?

As to speculation about how much all this will hurt Open AI and potentially create an opening for rivals such as Google, Meta, Anthropic and X.ai, that may be more wishful thinking than anything else.

The above chart by CB Insights clearly shows Open AI well ahead of all others in enterprise revenue. GPT 4 is multi-modal, has a larger context window than its competitors and with “roll your own” GPTs, they are making available task-specific no-code AI templates for anyone willing to spend $20 per month. If they can reunify and work out the internal differences, they will remain the industry leader until their competitors can challenge them. With Google’s Gemini reportedly not ready until 1st Q of 2024, and X.ai’s Grok still not widely available, Open AI still seems to be the best option for businesses large and small to start testing out AI solutions.

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