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OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

wsj.com

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Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#91

Post by papercrane »

agloe_dreams wrote: post #54
jacquesm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All they need is another 2% and at a measly two billion that would be an easy settlement. The board members get to save face and Satya is off to the races, employees happy, investors happy. It could easily happen.

What is interesting is that Sam noted that OpenAI board should go after his shares if he were to go off on the company...which implies some sort of ownership that others had no prior knowledge of. What's the over-under of his shares being more than 2%?

Based on OpenAI's structure, I would expect his equity would be in the OpenAI holding company, and not OpenAI Global, LLC which Microsoft is a minority owner of and the holding company is a majority holder. The holding company is what employees and investors have equity in.

If Altman had equity directly in OpenAI Global that would be really odd and go against OpenAIs previous disclosures.

https://openai.com/our-structure

Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#92

Post by dgacmu »

endisneigh wrote: post #36

The employees won’t resign and I doubt Microsoft will match the hypothetical 90B valuation for their profit participation units, otherwise they would’ve left already (Microsoft has agreed to match). The investors have no power here and are effectively irrelevant. The remaining board had little to lose. The charter explicitly calls investment risky, so they’re good there too. > The Company's duty to this mission and t…

The investors have extremely deep pockets and good lawyers. I would not want to be on that board even with very good D&O insurance. It's not bulletproof, and a lawsuit by Altman, in particular, could be excluded from coverage and force them to defend themselves out of pocket.

Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#93

Post by himaraya »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #87
himaraya wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant, can you link the claim that the clause in question got removed?

https://stratechery.com/2023/openais-misalignment-and-micros... "Microsoft’s original agreement with OpenAI also barred Microsoft from pursuing AGI based on OpenAI tech on its own; my understanding is that this clause was removed in the most recent agreement." (It's hidden under a citation bubble you need to click after the third paragraph.)

I see. Pursuing AGI sounds distinct from commercializing future versions of ChatGPT based on OpenAI IP. I imagine the exact legal wording in the contract makes all the difference.

The WSJ article from June he cited indicates the license still comes with restrictions.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-and-openai-forge-awkw...

Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#94

Post by righthand »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #71
righthand wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? The board announced the removal of a CEO which they have the power to do. It upset a bunch of employees who liked the CEO. The board is in search of a new CEO. OpenAI’s valuation isn’t because Sam Altman is worth $90B it’s the tech. The tech is fine. Investors have no reason to worry about their investment in the tech. The people under pressure are Sam Altman trying to reclaim his job he was fired from and Satya…

According to Stratechery, Microsoft does not just have the rights to use the source code and model weights for GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, but a clause saying that Microsoft could not use the models as foundations for their own projects was recently removed. > Investors have no reason to worry about their investment in the tech. If Stratechery is correct, this means that if Microsoft successfully poaches Sam Altman and friend…

Yeah okay Microsoft poaches them but they still have to restart building everything from scratch which wouldn’t benefit Microsoft. Microsoft doesn’t want to poach talent, they can always do that with or without this incident. Microsoft wants the whole bundle. Hence the media campaign Satya is doing.

Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#95

Post by zarzavat »

3cats-in-a-coat wrote: post #75
righthand wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? The board announced the removal of a CEO which they have the power to do. It upset a bunch of employees who liked the CEO. The board is in search of a new CEO. OpenAI’s valuation isn’t because Sam Altman is worth $90B it’s the tech. The tech is fine. Investors have no reason to worry about their investment in the tech. The people under pressure are Sam Altman trying to reclaim his job he was fired from and Satya…

"It upset a bunch of employees. The tech is fine". Uhmm, it upset 98% (not figuratively, but mathematically) of all 700 employees who signed a petition to quit unless he's reinstated and for the board to resign. As for the tech... who... exactly do you think created, maintains and is developing future enhancement for the tech? Is it doing it by itself? Sorry, we're not there yet .

98% is meaningless. If Altman is reinstated then he will have the power to fire anyone who didn’t sign. You’d be an idiot not to sign it.

Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#96

Post by righthand »

narrator wrote: post #68
flappyeagle wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These words are gonna get ate one way or another. There is no outcome where the current board wins. Emmet is already threatening the board with resignation unless they provide evidence of wrongdoing [1]. Which they don't have, because they would have revealed it already. They are empty shirts. [1] https://x.com/emilychangtv/status/1727020834005700914?s=20

So no evidence of wrongdoing then: -----> WHY DID THEY DO IT? SERIOUSLY! They all just decided to wake up that day and say let's go fire Sam and blow up the company because "lack of candor" that they can't even give details on?? These are serious people doing serious stuff. These are not idiots. What the heck is going on? Can anyone explain?

Yeah there has been plenty of explanation. Sam Altman has competing interests and was looking to leverage OpenAI’s tech in those interests.

Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#97

Post by layer8 »

foobarian wrote: post #5

Assuming Altman has already signed paper with MSFT, how would this work exactly? Break whatever contract clause there was involved? Maybe it's customary to have an easy backout period in situations like this.

He hasn’t. Why would he prematurely?

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/20/23970100/sam-altman-micr...

Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#98

Post by abi »

15457345234 wrote: post #23
jacquesm wrote: post #13

Does anybody know who is currently CEO of OpenAI? Friday, Sam. Saturday, Mira. Sunday was a day off, Monday it was Emmet so who is it for today? Kidding aside, the board is under more and more pressure but - surprisingly - they haven't folded yet. I am interpreting that as that they are trying to get something out of it that nobody is willing to give them. The new CEO is also surprisingly not to be found at all, no p…

> Does anybody know who is currently CEO of OpenAI? Emmett Shear. Altman won't be back. Investors like success and returns but they don't like companies where all the employees have basically sworn out an oath of fealty to the CEO, as it means they (the investors) have basically no control over anything.

What are you talking about? The OpenAI board isn't made up of investors.

Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#99

Post by ben_w »

righthand wrote: post #65
flappyeagle wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These words are gonna get ate one way or another. There is no outcome where the current board wins. Emmet is already threatening the board with resignation unless they provide evidence of wrongdoing [1]. Which they don't have, because they would have revealed it already. They are empty shirts. [1] https://x.com/emilychangtv/status/1727020834005700914?s=20

Why? The board announced the removal of a CEO which they have the power to do. It upset a bunch of employees who liked the CEO. The board is in search of a new CEO. OpenAI’s valuation isn’t because Sam Altman is worth $90B it’s the tech. The tech is fine. Investors have no reason to worry about their investment in the tech. The people under pressure are Sam Altman trying to reclaim his job he was fired from and Satya…

> OpenAI’s valuation isn’t because Sam Altman is worth $90B it’s the tech. The tech is fine. Investors have no reason to worry about their investment in the tech.

The following story is only about an hour old, but the investors are reportedly considering legal action against the board:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-investors-consider...

Re: OpenAI investors keep pushing for Sam Altman’s return

#100

Post by zepton »

jacquesm wrote: post #18
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if Microsoft owning 49% of OpenAI vastly simplifies such a situation. Or maybe further complexifies it. It's fascinating to watch, anyway.

All they need is another 2% and at a measly two billion that would be an easy settlement. The board members get to save face and Satya is off to the races, employees happy, investors happy. It could easily happen.

Microsoft couldn't control the OpenAI business even if it owned every unit of every LLC associated with OpenAI (except for the special units owned by OpenAI GP LLC, which is wholly owned+controlled by the non-profit). The operating agreement of OpenAI LLC (which actually operates the OpenAI business) specifies that OpenAI GP LLC (which is wholly owned and controlled by the non-profit) controls it regardless of how many units it owns. See https://openai.com/our-structure
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