Finally, there’s some respite from the brewing OpenAI crisis that had plunged the tech world into a conundrum. OpenAI announced the return of Sam Altman as the CEO, and with that comes the announcement of a new board of directors.
In this reshuffle, three members have been announced and only Adam D’Angelo remains from the old board. All three co-founders have been removed.
Here’s a list of the new board members:
Bret Taylor
American entrepreneur and computer programmer, Bret Taylor has been appointed as the chair of the board for OpenAI. Former co-CEO of Salesforce and having served on the board of tech companies such as Twitter and Shopify, Taylor comes with a vast experience. He had co-founded a company called FriendFeed, which was later acquired by Facebook in 2009 and served as its CTO for three years. He was also the co-creator of Google Maps.
A close companion of Sam Altman, Taylor along with Brian Chesky, CEO of AirBnB, was siding with Altman in the board negotiations that happened last night with Emmett Shear and Adam D’Angelo.
Larry Henry Summers
Lawrence Summers is an American economist. He held the position of the 71st United States Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2001 and served as the director of the National Economic Council from 2009 to 2010.
Additionally, he was the president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006, and currently, he holds the titles of Charles W. Eliot University professor and director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School.
Having held prestigious financial positions, including that of a chief economist of World Bank, Summers was involved in a few controversies in the past. His association with Jeffrey Epstein, making controversial statements claiming men to outperform women in maths and science due to biological differences, and rushing to help his tech friends during Silicon Valley Bank collapse had garnered criticism.
Adam D’Angelo
Adam D’Angelo, co-founder and CEO of Quora, was the former CTO of Facebook. He joined the OpenAI board as an independent director in 2018, and is the only member of the board who has not been removed after the OpenAI drama.
Interestingly, D’Angelo was considered one of the key figures to have made the whole OpenAI drama into a power struggle. He was also known for his stubbornness among Quora employees, something which may have played a part in the negotiation meetings among the founders. With so much going on, the move to retain him on the board was surprising, with people quick to react on X.
The company confirmed that this is an initial board, probably hinting that more members may join the team. Interestingly all three cofounders of OpenAI -- Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever have been removed along with both the women board members- Tasha McCauley and Helen Toner. The women, along with D’Angelo and Ilya Sutskever, were involved in Altman’s ousting.
As of now, there are no women on OpenAI's board.
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