The dust has finally started to settle after the chaotic weekend at OpenAI. On Friday, the ChatGPT maker fired CEO Sam Altman. A day later attempts led by investors to get Altman rehired failed. And by this morning, in a stunning turn of events, Altman was hired by OpenAI’s biggest investor, Microsoft, to lead a new AI research division.
Amid all this drama, there was another major development at OpenAI: the appointment of new interim CEO Emmett Shear.
Shear was born in 1983 and raised in Seattle. In 2005, he earned his Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from Yale. He’s been active in Silicon Valley ever since, but he’s best known for cofounding Justin.tv in 2007. If that name doesn’t sound familiar to you, you’ll recognize the name of what Justin.tv morphed into: Twitch.
In the early 2010’s, the Twitch video-game-streaming platform exploded in popularity and it was sold to Amazon for almost $1 billion in 2014. Shear, who has also been a partner at Y Combinator, stayed on as Twitch CEO until March of this year, when he stepped down due to the birth of his son.
But after just nine months, Shear is now in the CEO seat again—this time at the hottest company in the AI field. Shear posted a lengthy post on X after it was announced he would take the reins as interim CEO at OpenAI. Here are some key points from that post:
- On accepting the OpenAI CEO role: Shear said he returned to CEO life because running OpenAI was a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” calling the company “one of the most important companies currently in existence.”
- On OpenAI’s relationship with Microsoft: Shear said OpenAI’s “partnership with Microsoft remains strong.” Whether that’s actually the case remains to be seen, however, as Microsoft was reportedly very upset about Altman’s firing, and also given that Altman now works directly for Microsoft.
- On Sam Altman’s firing: Here Shear didn’t mince words, saying, “it’s clear that the process and communications around Sam’s removal has been handled very badly, which has seriously damaged our trust.” There’s likely not a person in Silicon Valley who wouldn’t agree with Shear’s assessment of the matter.
- On his plans for the next 30 days: Shear says he will hire an independent investigator to find out about the processes that led up to OpenAI’s chaotic weekend and “reform the management and leadership team” in order to better drive results for OpenAI customers. Shear says that depending on the results of the investigation, he “will drive changes in the organization—up to and including pushing strongly for significant governance changes if necessary.”
“I have nothing but respect for what Sam and the entire OpenAI team have built,” Shear concluded. “It’s not just an incredible research project and software product, but an incredible company. I’m here because I know that, and I want to do everything in my power to protect it and grow it further.”
Today I got a call inviting me to consider a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to become the interim CEO of @OpenAI. After consulting with my family and reflecting on it for just a few hours, I accepted. I had recently resigned from my role as CEO of Twitch due to the birth of my…
— Emmett Shear (@eshear) November 20, 2023
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