OpenAI ousted Co-Founder Sam Altman will not resume his role as the CEO of OpenAI, as reported by The Information. The temporary leadership baton passes to Emmett Shear, former head of Twitch and a familiar face in the tech industry.
Ilya Sutskever, a director on OpenAI's board, conveyed this information to the company's staff. Altman will join Microsoft along with former President Greg Brockman and other colleagues who left OpenAI, as announced by company's CEO Satya Nadella.
Who is Emmett Shear?
Born in 1983, Emmett Shear holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Yale University, completing his graduation in 2005. He is renowned as the co-founder of Twitch, a popular video game streaming platform that was acquired by Amazon in 2014. With a career spanning 16 years in the live video for the internet domain, Shear began with Justin.tv, which later evolved into Twitch.
In February of this year, Shear stepped down from his role as the CEO of Twitch and assumed a part-time advisory position at Y Combinator, a San Francisco-based startup, as reported by the Washington Post. Y Combinator is the same entity that Sam Altman himself led from 2014 to 2019. Shear, who resides in San Francisco with his family, will now be taking over as the CEO of OpenAI from Mira Murati, the interim CEO aligned with Altman.
The decision to appoint Shear suggests a dynamic shift within OpenAI's leadership, and his entry into the role may influence the company's trajectory in the coming months.
Employee Exodus Follows Altman's Ouster
Many OpenAI employees announced on Sunday night that they were leaving the company. This news came after Ilya Sutskever, a board director and the chief scientist at OpenAI, told them that Sam Altman, the former CEO who was let go, would not be coming back. This could make it difficult for the company to progress after the surprising dismissal. It could also alter the direction of the artificial intelligence industry and give a boost to competitors like Google, who have been trying to recruit OpenAI staff in the past two days.
The tech industry was taken aback when Altman, often seen as the face of generative AI, was dismissed by the company's board. Altman expressed his sentiments by posting an image of himself wearing an OpenAI guest badge on a messaging platform, captioning it as the "first and last time" he would wear one.
Altman's dismissal has caused unrest among current and former employees, raising concerns about the potential impact on an upcoming $86 billion share sale. Brockman, who had stepped down from the board as chairman and announced his departure from the company, was also present at the office.
