zlacker

>>medler+(OP)
This makes sense. The board thinks they're calling the shots, but the reality is the people with the money are the ones calling the shots, always. Boards are just appointed by shareholders aka investors aka capital holders to do their bidding.

The capped-profit / non-profit structure muddles that a little bit, but the reality is that entity can't survive without the funding that goes into the for-profit piece

And if current investors + would-be investors threaten to walk away, what can the board really do? They have no leverage.

Sounds like they really didn't "play the tape forward" and think this through...

>>airstr+r3
A non profit board absolutely calls the shots at a non profit, in so far as the CEO and their employment goes. Non profit boards are not beholden, structurally, to investors and there are no shareholders.

No stakeholder would walk away from OpenAI for want of sam Altman. They don’t license OpenAI technology or provide funding for his contribution. They do it to get access to GPT4. There is no comparable competitor available.

If anything they would be miffed about how it was handled, but to be frank, unless GPT4 is sam Altman furiously typing, I don’t know he’s that important. The instability caused by the suddenness, that’s different.

>>fnordp+f7
Something I don't fully understand, from [1], Altman was an employee of the for-profit entity. So to fire him, wouldn't the non-profit board be acting in it's capacity as a director of the for-profit entity (and thus have a fiduciary duty to all shareholders of the for-profit entity)? Non-profit governance is traditionally lax, but would the other shareholders have a case against the members of the non-profit board for acting recklessly w/ respect to shareholder interests in their capacity as directors of the for-profit?

This corporate structure is so convoluted that it's difficult to figure out what the actual powers/obligations of the individual agents involved are.

[1] https://openai.com/our-structure

>>pbadam+Pn
LLCs do not require rights be assigned fairly to all shareholders if the operating agreement and by-laws say otherwise. This is the case with OpenAI, where the operating agreement effectively makes the fiduciary duty of the for-profit the accomplishment of the non-profit's charter. The pinkish purpleish block of text on the page you linked goes into more detail here.

(Remember, fiduciary does not necessarily have anything to do with money)