After a weekend of boardroom drama, news reports suggest the board of OpenAI has decided not to reinstate fired CEO Sam Altman, who was let go Friday, and instead to install former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear as its new interim CEO . The news, which was first reported by The Information, follows an astonishing weekend of back and forth about the future of the groundbreaking company. On Friday, Altman and President Greg Brockman were suddenly let go amid apparent disputes about AI safety, and the company’s CTO, Mira Murati, was installed as interim CEO.
By Sunday, reports were that the company’s investors were pushing the board to rehire Altman—who returned to the company’s offices for negotiations. But late Sunday evening the news broke that Shear would be named interim CEO. Shear was one of the founders of Justin.TV, the livestreaming site that eventually spun off Twitch (since purchased by Amazon for nearly $1 billion), where Shear became the CEO. He resigned from that position in March 2023.
The news will have large ramifications across the tech industry. Microsoft, which is one of OpenAI’s largest investors and is using OpenAI products as the foundation of its own forays into AI, already saw its stock tumble Friday after the news of Altman’s departure broke. And many OpenAI employees signaled over the weekend that they supported Altman and Brockman, who could potentially start their own new venture—and possibly take many of those employees with them.
