Clearly Microsoft staked its whole product roadmap on 4 random people with no financial skin in the game.
Honestly, this is the big problem with Big Non Profit (tm). The entire structure of non-profits is really meant for ladies clubs, Rotary groups, and your church down the street, not openai and ikea.
You actually think that for-profit corporate boards are significantly different, especially in the startup/early IPO phase?
Man I'm drunk in conspiracy theories tonight. Between a huge lay off and the Open AI fiasco please allow me indulge myself...
Not saying there is proof, but we just found out Ukraine blew up the Russian pipeline so it seems weird to just squash debate at the 'that's too crazy to ever happen'. Way crazier things have happened/are constantly happening.
What the hell were they thinking? Just because you are a non-profit doesn't mean you should imitate other non-profits and put crazies on the board.
https://www.economist.com/business/2006/05/11/flat-pack-acco...
When things cool down in a few months we will learn Altman and Brockman were some of the few sane people on the board.
Anyway if I was in business of destabilizing governments around the world I would not bother dealing with board meetings. But maybe that's just me.
Huh? Plenty of startups in the stage being referenced are still majority owned by the founders.
Likely it's already brought them more than $10B they paid.
Also, I worked in startups and my ex-gf in various nonprofits, and the amount of drama she saw was way higher than in the commercial world
Did Microsoft have any other route to AI relevance?
The military would need to be literally breeding geniuses and cultivating a secret scientific ecosystem to be ahead on AI right now.
The board is in absolute control in a not-for-profit. The loophole is that some have bylaws that make ad-hoc board meetings and management change votes very difficult to call for non-operating board members, and it can take months to get a motion to fire the CEO up for a vote.
In some not-for-profits, the board often even manages to recruit and seat new board members. Some not-for-profits operate as membership associations, where the organization’s membership elects the board members to terms.
On the few not-for-profits where I was a board member, we started every meeting with a motion to retain the Executive Director (CEO). If the vote failed, so did the Executive Director.
The Illuminati are a front for the Jews™ (not to be confused with Jewish people).
The Jews™ are a front for the Catholic Church.
The Catholic church is a front for the Lizard People.
The Lizard People are a front for the Government.
Nobody is in control. The conspiracy is circular. There is no conspiracy. Everything in this post is false. Only an idiot cannot place his absolute certainty in paradoxes.
The board reports to the shareholders and the management reports to the board.
In early stage companies it is possible and likely that all three are the same person, that doesn't change the different fiduciary responsibilities for each role they play.
This has not do with beneficial ownership of the underlying asset alone. Principals sometimes do not have that relationship. Asset ownership is a common way to benefit from a entity, but not the only way.
Specifically here Sam Altman does not own shares in the for-profit entity and non profit entities do not have shares.
I don't have direct knowledge on how OpenAI handles it, however it is not uncommon to do revenue sharing, or lease an underlying asset like a brand name (WeWork did this) from the Principal directly, or pay for perks like housing, planes etc, or pay lot of money in Salary/Cash compensation, there are myriad ways to benefit from control without share ownership.