In the crisis at OpenAI, is Microsoft a winner or a loser? The main partner and external shareholder of the structure, the software giant is playing very big. Tuesday, November 21 in the morning, the end point was not yet written in the chaotic soap opera that opened Friday with the surprise ousting of Sam Altman, the co-founder and CEO of the most prominent start-up in artificial intelligence ( AI). The latter could be hired at Microsoft, with other employees of the company behind ChatGPT. But he was also working on a possible return to OpenAI, revealed The Verge.
“No matter where Sam Altman is, he will be working with Microsoft,” Satya Nadella, the president and CEO of Microsoft, put into perspective on Bloomberg TV, posing as the only actor visible on television in this closed-door drama. “I’m open to both options,” he added, on CNBC. “Obviously, we want Sam [Altman] and Greg [Brockman, another co-founder who resigned after the CEO’s ouster] to have a fantastic place to call home if they’re not at OpenAI “, he explained. As for a return of the fallen boss to the start-up, “it is up to its board of directors and its managers to decide,” judged Mr. Nadella, while warning: “It is clear that something must change in the governance of OpenAI. »
At OpenAI, “intense discussions” are taking place with a view to reuniting the team, the managers wrote Monday evening, in an internal memo mentioned by Bloomberg. But Mr. Altman, like the board, was “not yet ready to give a final answer.” According to a source cited by the Financial Times, the board members behind Mr. Altman’s departure remained quite firm. Conversely, one of OpenAI’s shareholder funds threatened to challenge his dismissal through legal action.
“A poker move that will go down in legend”
For Microsoft, this play began rather in tragedy: on Friday, the software giant learned at the last second of the dismissal of the general director of the structure in which it had nevertheless invested 13 billion dollars (11.8 billion euros). since 2019. And whose AI models, capable of generating texts and images, have been widely deployed in its software, including Office. Holder of 49% of the for-profit company created in 2019 by OpenAI, Mr. Nadella’s firm nevertheless has no influence on the board of the non-profit structure which controls it. The latter judged Mr. Altman’s strategy too focused on the short-term development of commercial products (like those of Microsoft). Worse, despite intense maneuvers by Mr. Nadella to rehabilitate the general director, the board appointed a replacement on Monday morning, Emmett Shear, a supporter of “slowing down” AI research.