Sam Altman has been fired as CEO of OpenAI, the company announced on Friday.
“Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities,” the company said in its blog post.
EDITED TO ADD direct link to OpenAI board announcement:
https://openai.com/blog/openai-announces-leadership-transition
So what is their board here if they aren’t investors?
It’s a non-profit.
OpenAI is a non-profit with a board which owns the LLC which is what was invested into and makes money.
This was not the LLC board, but the non-profit board in charge of the whole thing.
Thanks for explaining! I knew about this arrangement but didn’t know the two boards work this way.
So, non-profit board members are being simply hired as employees and they don’t have to have any connection with the company as long as they meet the bylaw criteria.
Altman himself praised this non profit overseer structure before. I wonder what does he think of it now 🫣
A point of clarification, board members aren’t usually considered employees by virtue of their presence on the board. They are apart from the organization. They often have a dual role as some kind of executive in the company, though.
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted, this is a good question that not everyone knows the answer to. (It’s been answered above me, but just so we’re clear, any large organization can have a board of directors, whether they invest money or not. A board of directors isn’t necessarily “the people who have money”, it’s the people who set the direction.)