You’ve likely heard about all the drama going on with OpenAI over the past few days.
Well, it’s somehow continuing to get weirder.
Quick recap of OpenAI debacle
On Friday evening, the OpenAI non-profit board of directors announced its ousting of CEO Sam Altman. The reason why is still unconfirmed. As a result, OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman also quit the company. However, investors in the for-profit arm, like Microsoft, were not happy with this surprising news. Less than 24 hours later, OpenAI said that it was interested in Altman’s return. That didn’t happen by the deadline, so OpenAI announced a new interim CEO. Consequently, many OpenAI employees threatened to walk.
To top it all off, in the early hours of Monday morning, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella made an announcement: Sam Altman and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman weren’t going back to OpenAI; they’re, instead, poised to join Microsoft.
“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,” Nadella posted on X while committing to continue the company’s partnership with OpenAI.
The message in Nadella’s post seems very clear. However, later that day, new reports claimed that Altman going to Microsoft was not a done deal.
On Monday evening, Nadella appeared on CNBC for an interview. Anchor Jon Fortt asked the Microsoft CEO the question we’ve all been wondering: “Is Sam Altman going to be a Microsoft employee?”
Nadella beats around the bush
Bizarrely, Nadella couldn’t give a straight answer to a straightforward question – a question that Nadella had the answer for earlier that same day.
“Yeah, I mean…we are…on Friday morning, Jon, I got up and I was very committed to our um…you know, customers, and confident in our technology roadmap and, um, and really partnered with OpenAI and really partnered with Sam,” Nadella answered. “And here, as we speak on Monday I guess it is today, it is exactly the same place I am.”
Throughout the rest of the interview, when pressed about Altman again, Nadella would stick to the basic talking points of promoting Microsoft’s position in the innovative technology space and repeat the company’s “commitment to OpenAI and Sam.”
Based on this interview, it appears that Altman is not officially a Microsoft employee…yet? Or not at all? Nobody seems to know what’s going on. Not even the CEO of Microsoft – the company that pledged $13 billion to OpenAI.
For now, we’ll all just have to keep following the OpenAI situation as it unfolds.
