After the OpenAI board of directors fired CEO Sam Altman and removed the company’s president Greg Brockman as chair, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella hired both to lead the company’s new research lab which will reportedly operate as an independent entity within Microsoft. (To complicate matters further, Microsoft is a major investor in OpenAI.)
Note: Brockman quit OpenAI in solidarity with Altman.
A letter signed by more than 700 OpenAI employees was then sent to the board, demanding that they “appoint two new lead independent directors, such as Bret Taylor and Will Hurd” and “reinstate Altman and ex-president Greg Brockman.”
If not, the employees threaten that they will quit OpenAI and join Altman and Brockman at Microsoft. (Nadella and Microsoft have made the latter request — reinstating Altman and Brockman — unlikely.)
Yesterday, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff pitched the remaining OpenAI researchers with his own deal.
Salesforce will match any OpenAI researcher who has tendered their resignation full cash & equity OTE to immediately join our Salesforce Einstein Trusted AI research team under Silvio Savarese. Send me your cv directly to [email protected]. Einstein is the most successful… pic.twitter.com/1RXoc9ekeo
— Marc Benioff (@Benioff) November 20, 2023
On X, Benioff announced: “Salesforce will match any OpenAI researcher who has tendered their resignation full cash & equity OTE to immediately join our Salesforce Einstein Trusted AI research team under Silvio Savarese. Send me your cv directly to [email protected].”
Benioff describes Salesforce’s Einstein as “the most successful enterprise AI Platform completing 1 Trillion predictive & generative transactions this week!”
