Return to OpenAI as CEO. Mira will return to her role as CTO. The new initial board will consist of Bret Taylor (president), Larry Summers and Adam D’Angelo.
I have never been more excited about the future. I am extremely grateful for everyone’s hard work in an unclear and unprecedented situation, and I believe our resilience and spirit set us apart in the industry. I feel very, very good about our likelihood of success in achieving our mission.
Before we move on to what comes next, I would like to share some thanks.
I love and respect Ilya, I think he is a guiding light on the field and a gem of a human being. I have no ill will towards him. While Ilya will no longer serve on the board, we look forward to continuing our working relationship and are discussing how his work at OpenAI can continue.
I thank Adam, Tasha, and Helen for working with us to come up with this solution that best serves the mission. I am excited to continue working with Adam and am sincerely grateful to Helen and Tasha for investing so much effort into this process.
Thanks also to Emmett, who played a key and constructive role in helping us achieve this result. Emmett’s dedication to ai safety and balancing stakeholder interests was clear.
Mira did an incredible job throughout all of this, selflessly serving the mission, the team, and the company at all times. She is an incredible leader and OpenAI wouldn’t be OpenAI without her. Thank you.
Greg and I are partners in the management of this company. We’ve never figured out how to communicate that on the org chart, but we will. In the meantime, I just wanted to make it clear. Thank you for everything you’ve done from the beginning and how you’ve handled things from the moment this started and over the last week.
The leadership team (Mira, Brad, Jason, Che, Hannah, Diane, Anna, Bob, Srinivas, Matt, Lilian, Miles, Jan, Wojciech, John, Jonathan, Pat and many more) is clearly prepared to lead the company without me. They say that one way to evaluate a CEO is how he chooses and trains potential successors to him; On that metric I’m doing much better than I thought. It is clear to me that the company is in good hands and I hope this is very clear to everyone. Thank you all.
Jakub, Szymon and Aleksander are exceptional talents and I am very happy that they have come together to advance us and our research. Thank you.
To all of you, our team: I’m sure books will be written about this period and I hope the first thing you say is how wonderful the entire team has been. Now that we’ve been through all this, we haven’t lost a single employee. They stood strong for each other, for this company, and for our mission. One of the most important things for the team building AGI safely is the ability to handle stressful and uncertain situations and maintain good judgment at all times. The best notes. Thank you all.
Satya, Kevin, Amy, and Brad have been incredible partners throughout all of this, with exactly the right priorities every time. They had our back and were ready to welcome us all if we couldn’t achieve our main goal. We clearly made the right decision in partnering with Microsoft and I am excited that our new board includes them as a non-voting observer. Thank you.
To our partners and users, thank you for continuing with us. We really felt the outpouring of support and love, and that helped us all get through this. The fact that we haven’t lost a single client will drive us to work even harder for you and we are all excited to get back to work.
Will Hurd, Brian Chesky, Bret Taylor and Larry Summers put their lives on hold and did so much to support the mission. I don’t know how they did it so well, but they really did it. Thank you.
Ollie also put his life on hold all this time to do everything he could to help, as well as providing his usual unconditional love and support. Thank you and I love you.
What’s next?
We have three immediate priorities.
Advance our research plan and invest further in our comprehensive security efforts, which have always been fundamental to our work. Our research roadmap is clear; This was a wonderful time to focus. I share the emotion that you all feel; We will turn this crisis into an opportunity! I’ll work with Mira on this.
Continue to improve and implement our products and serve our customers. It is important that people experience the benefits and promises of ai and have the opportunity to shape it. We continue to believe that great products are the best way to achieve this. I will work with Brad, Jason and Anna to ensure our unwavering commitment to users, customers, partners and governments around the world is clear.
Bret, Larry and Adam will work very hard on the extremely important task of building a board with diverse perspectives, improving our governance structure and overseeing an independent review of recent events. I look forward to working closely with them on these crucial steps so that everyone can have confidence in the stability of OpenAI.
I’m looking forward to finishing the job of building a beneficial AGI with all of you: the best team in the world, the best mission in the world.
Love,
Sam
