A sudden and seismic leadership crisis at OpenAI has led to a revolving door of CEOs at the artificial intelligence company, with tech entrepreneur Emmett Shear becoming the latest to take the helm on Monday.
Just days earlier, OpenAI’s board abruptly ousted then-CEO Sam Altman, installing Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati as interim CEO. As the “Game of Thrones”-style drama played out over the weekend, questions swirled about Altman’s fate. But by Monday morning, Altman had accepted a job at Microsoft, the tech giant with a sizable investment in OpenAI; Shear was named interim CEO; and hundreds of OpenAI employees — including Murati — were calling for the board’s resignation and threatening to follow Altman to Microsoft.
The stunning events of the past 60 hours raise deep questions about the future of OpenAI, the company — with its unusual hybrid structure as a non-profit and for-profit — that first brought the world ChatGPT and jumpstarted a global debate about generative AI’s promise and pe