Things have quieted down at OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT. That's a sharp contrast to earlier in November when the company's board of directors fired its CEO Sam Altman. After a revolt by most of the company's employees, the board resigned, and a new board was put in place, which rehired Altman as CEO just a few days after his firing.
Today, OpenAI updated its blog with a new post with messages from Altman along with the company's new board chairperson Bret Taylor. The big news from the post is that Microsoft, the company's biggest investor and arguably its biggest partner, now has a non-voting spot on OpenAI's board.
In the post, Altman thanks Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and the members of the company's leadership. He added:
They’ve had our backs and were ready to welcome all of us if we couldn’t achieve our primary goal. We clearly made the right choice to partner with Microsoft and I’m excited that our new board will include them as a non-voting observer. Thank you.
While Microsoft won't have any voting rights on the board, it will be able to get more inside info on OpenAI. Microsoft will likely be a big influence in OpenAI's overall direction in the future.
Now that the power struggle at OpenAI is over, Altman says the company has three current priorities. One is to advance "our research plan and further investing in our full-stack safety efforts" and the second is to continue "to improve and deploy our products and serve our customers."
Finally, Altman stated he will work with the new board members "on the extremely important task of building out a board of diverse perspectives, improving our governance structure and overseeing an independent review of recent events." There's no word on who will be conducting this review, or if its results will be made public.
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