zlacker

>>medler+(OP)
It's insane to me how easily Sam's side can spin the board firing him for violating the company's Charter and then not backtracking at all as "Within 24 hours the board has come crawling back, I- er Sam Altman might deign to return if they grovel hard enough and I'm given complete control."

This is really, really clearly incestuous tech media stuff as part of a pressure campaign. Sam is the darlin of tech media and he's clearly instigated this reporting because they're reporting his thoughts and not the Board's in an article that purports to know what the Board is thinking, the investors who aren't happy (the point of a non-profit is that they are allowed to make investors unhappy in pursuit of the greater mission!) have an obvious incentive to join him in this pressure campaign, and then all he needs for "journalism" is one senior employee who's willing to leave for Sam to instead say to the Verge that the Board is reconsidering. Boom, massive pressure campaign and perception of the Board flip flopping without them doing any such thing. If they had done any such thing and there was proof of that, the Verge could have quoted the thoughts of anyone on the Board, stated it had reviewed communications and verified they were genuine, etc.

>>lucubr+Lk
the point of a non-profit is that they are allowed to make investors unhappy in pursuit of the greater mission

A non-profit isn’t supposed to have investors. This structure should never have been allowed in the first place (nor IKEA.)

>>bradle+lq
Which is why investors that signed on got a giant warning saying that the Board could choose to be unprofitable if they wanted and that the mission came first, so they should view their investment as a donation.

>>lucubr+Yq
What we're seeing is that (predictably) the investors have decided that they don't care that they agreed with it and they don't want to lose out on their investment.

What remains to be seen is just how closely the board holds the charter to their hearts and whether the governance structure that was built is strong enough to withstand this.

>>cthalu+lr
MSFT likely has the option to claw back some of their money - they could also cease providing Openai gpu’s. At the extreme, they could do so tomorrow based on their perception of the contract dispute. Although such action would risk reputational damage to MSFT.

At a minimum, taking your largest supplier and customer for a ride is probably a bad idea.

>>lumost+ct
It wouldn't be a good idea in a regular business, for sure.

But non-profits aren't a regular business and their ultimate obligation is to their charter. Depending on just what the level of misalignment was here, it's possible that the company becoming nonviable due to terminating Altman is serving the charter more closely than keeping him on board.

No one posting here has enough detail to really understand what is going on, but we do know the structure of OpenAI and the operating agreement for the for-profit LLC make it a mistake to view the company from the lens as we would a regular for-profit company.

>>cthalu+ku
We can view it from any lens.

In any lens if microsoft pulls their GPUs and funding, then OpenAI is through.

No, pissing microsoft off in this situation is not a good idea. Because microsoft can shut the whole organization down.