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Satya Nadella played this one perfectly
OpenAI is in the process of amply collapsing on itself , follow the ouster of former CEO Sam Altman in a shocking board decision . Exactly why the board settle to fire Altman is still ill-defined , but it seems progressively likely that it was more about superpower - play mischief-making than anything else . What is clear is that Microsoft , through speedy activeness and decisive strategic leaders from CEO Satya Nadella , is poise to come out the clear winner , regardless of the last build of what OpenAI looks like .
After what seem probable to have been tense negotiations yesterday , Nadella annunciate that both Altman and OpenAI chairperson Greg Brockman would be join Microsoft as employee , withAltman running his own AI group within the companyas a CEO . Since then , nearly500 employee have also indicate that they will quitunless the circuit board resigns and Altman and Brockman are reinstated , which would mean that the company is essentially gutted .
Everything is so fluid at this item , and so much changed materially over the row of the weekend from Friday good afternoon until now , that it ’s hard to say exactly what OpenAI or Microsoft ’s raw AI group will attend like by the end of the twenty-four hour period . But one thing is very vindicated — no one is good off now than they were before , with the sole exception of Microsoft .
The market match : Microsoft ’s ploughshare Leontyne Price was up nearly five point early this morning in trading , reflecting investor confidence in the move made by Nadella .
Microsoft already had a considerable ownership stake in OpenAI , thanks to multiple sizable investment funds . But the company also had other investors , and none of those tie-up to benefit from having the entire team make off from the entity that was OpenAI to Microsoft ’s whole owned and controlled internal AI grouping . Sure , Microsoft might take a bathtub on its OpenAI investment — but the price is a little one to make up for a caller with Microsoft ’s resources , given the top it stands to realize by fundamentally acqui - hire OpenAI ’s gist engineering team .
Already , Microsoft is providing much of the compute infrastructure for OpenAI technology . Now , it managed to get the applied science and strategy of OpenAI leadership but without have to contend with many of the regulatory hurdles that would ’ve come from really acquiring OpenAI : It ’s much harder for entity like the EU challenger Commission to challengeessentially just a issue of high - level hires versus a proper merger .
We cognize for certain that Microsoft AI group under Altman will include Greg Brockman , as well as GPT-4 lead Jakub Pachocki ; the former head of preparedness at OpenAI , Aleksander Madry ; researcher Szymon Sidor and more . Whether that will ever include Open AI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever , who seems to have participated in the revolt against Altman to start with , is an overt motion . Sutskever sustain on Twitter that he is n’t going to Microsoft , but he has expressed regret on Twitter regarding his actions in a seeming attack to harmonize with Altman and Brockman .
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Again , everything is move far too quickly to make any telephone call regarding the definite state of where affair terminate up , but it would be rummy for Nadella to make such a definitive announcement regarding Altman and Brockman join Microsoft if that was n’t mostly locked in . And the result of that is that Microsoft picked up early what it in all likelihood would ’ve bought subsequently at a much eminent terms , with much more regulative reddened magnetic tape to cut through . Well - dally Satya .
