Looking at the team it's clear its a bunch of brilliant but indisciplined cats. They will be difficult to herd but for what the real plan is here, acquisition, it clearly does not matter.
They will do a couple of tools, then another panicked company like Apple, or Facebook or AWS, needing to justify the millions spent on AI and with nothing to show for, will acquire them for billions. When somebody will point out they don't make money or have no product, somebody here will point to the "team" as you just did :-)
But since we are talking about 12 billion, let's play the VC and do the due diligence first on the leader?
Reporting from The Optimist by Keach Hagey and other open sources, plus the famous thread here when Sam Altman got fired from OpenAI, reveals that Mira Murati had a central role in Sam Altman November 2023 firing.
For VCs, this is a masterclass in corporate survival and a massive red flag. Evidence shows Murati was the primary architect of the case against Altman:
- Collected "screenshots from Murati's Slack channel" documenting alleged toxic behavior
- Wrote private memos questioning Altman's leadership
- Initiated board contact through Ilya Sutskever
- Sent "hefty PDF files of evidence" to board members via self-destructing emails
Then ...When employees revolted, fearing lost equity, immediately switched sides, signed the letter demanding Altman's return, then later claimed she "fought the actions aggressively."
She survived by reading the room perfectly:
- Became interim CEO during the crisis
- Positioned herself as essential to Altman's return
- Exited in September 2024 just before the for-profit restructuring
- Immediately raised $2B for her new startup showing it had it planned all along.
Investment Implications:
This reveals someone who will systematically undermine leadership while maintaining plausible deniability, then switch sides when politically convenient. Remember Paul Graham's famous quote about Sam Altman? That he "could be parachuted into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and be king"? Murati might be even more astute.
She went from Intern → Tesla PM → Leap Motion → OpenAI VP → CTO → interim CEO → $2B startup founder, all with zero AI research background.
Her OpenAI trajectory shows world class political instincts. Join during post-Musk power vacuum (2018), build alliances with both sides, orchestrate a coup when convenient, flip sides when it fails, exit perfectly timed before restructuring.
For VCs:
Whether you see this as exceptional political skill or dangerous executive behavior depends on your risk tolerance.
Let's just hope the 10 millions dollars the government of Albania, the poorest nation in Europe, invested on this have been secured with proper share rights. That could make for some awkward reactions back home.