Ousted OpenAI CEO Altman planning new AI venture, sources say

Ousted OpenAI CEO Altman planning new AI venture, sources say

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Sam Altman, CEO of Microsoft-backed OpenAI and ChatGPT creator speaks during a talk at Tel Aviv University in Tel Aviv

Sam Altman, CEO of Microsoft-backed OpenAI and ChatGPT creator speaks during a talk at Tel Aviv University in Tel Aviv, Israel June 5, 2023. REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights

Nov 18 (Reuters) – Sam Altman, the recently ousted CEO of OpenAI, has been working on a new artificial intelligence venture he is planning to launch, sources briefed on the plan said on Saturday.

Former OpenAI president Greg Brockman, who said he quit OpenAI over Altman’s firing on Friday, is expected to join the effort, according to the Information, which reported the venture earlier citing a person familiar with the matter.

Altman could not be reached for comment and Brockman did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Some researchers at OpenAI, including Szymon Sidor, have quit the company over the CEO change but it was unclear if Sidor and others will join Altman’s new venture.

Altman and Apple’s (AAPL.O) former design chief Jony Ive have been discussing building a new artificial intelligence (AI) hardware device, the Information reported in September. It also reported at the time that SoftBank (9434.T) CEO Masayoshi Son has also been involved in the conversation.

The board of OpenAI, the company behind hit product ChatGPT, on Friday pushed out its high-profile CEO Altman. Co-founder Brockman quit shortly after Altman was fired.

Altman’s ouster was over “breakdown of communications,” not “malfeasance”, Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap wrote in an internal company memo earlier Saturday that was viewed by Reuters.

Reporting by Krystal Hu in New York, Anna Tong and Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco, Gursimran Kaur in Bengaluru; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Kenneth Li

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Krystal reports on venture capital and startups for Reuters. She covers Silicon Valley and beyond through the lens of money and characters, with a focus on growth-stage startups, tech investments and AI. She has previously covered M&A for Reuters, breaking stories on Trump’s SPAC and Elon Musk’s Twitter financing. Previously, she reported on Amazon for Yahoo Finance, and her investigation of the company’s retail practice was cited by lawmakers in Congress. Krystal started a career in journalism by writing about tech and politics in China. She has a master’s degree from New York University, and enjoys a scoop of Matcha ice cream as much as getting a scoop at work.

Anna Tong is a correspondent for Reuters based in San Francisco, where she reports on the technology industry. She joined Reuters in 2023 after working at the San Francisco Standard as a data editor. Tong previously worked at technology startups as a product manager and at Google where she worked in user insights and helped run a call center. Tong graduated from Harvard University.
Contact:4152373211

Jeffrey Dastin is a correspondent for Reuters based in San Francisco, where he reports on the technology industry and artificial intelligence. He joined Reuters in 2014, originally writing about airlines and travel from the New York bureau. Dastin graduated from Yale University with a degree in history.
He was part of a team that examined lobbying by Amazon.com around the world, for which he won a SOPA Award in 2022.

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