
Former Obama and Clinton official economist Larry Summers will be joining the initial, redesigned OpenAI board, while the company is welcoming back CEO Sam Altman, who was fired by the previous board, a few days ago.
A significant shift in the board’s composition is suggested by the appointment of former Clinton Treasury Secretary Summers, the retention of Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, and the appointment of former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor as chair.
Summers is a seasoned leader with backgrounds in politics, corporate boards, and Harvard University administration. At the moment, he is a board member of Skillsoft, a software company, and Block, the company that created Cash App.
Taylor holds two computer science degrees from Stanford University and has a wealth of experience working for tech companies. Last year, he announced his resignation as Salesforce’s co-CEO. Taylor founded and oversaw Quip, a collaboration platform that Salesforce later purchased for $750 million. Taylor also served as Facebook’s chief technology officer during its initial public offering.
D’Angelo, on the other hand, joined and is still a member of OpenAI’s board. He and other students, including Mark Zuckerberg, created music recommendation software at Phillips Exeter Academy during his high school years. He started the questions-and-answers website Quora in 2009 after working as chief technology officer at Facebook following his graduation from the California Institute of Technology. He cast a vote to remove Altman along with other members of the OpenAI board.
In January, D’Angelo told Forbes that he was hopeful that OpenAI could accomplish much more for the world than simply becoming another large corporation. He also praised the unconventional board structure of the company, which is run by a non-profit with a for-profit component.
Compared to the majority of the previous board, which abruptly fired Altman late on Friday, those three directors have a great deal more experience. This led to an employee revolt and broad business and tech industry repercussions. A few days later, OpenAI announced that it and Altman had come to a basic understanding.
Little information was provided by the company, which broke the news early on Tuesday morning, regarding the final composition of the board and its potential membership size. The business did not provide further information about why it referred to the three-person board as “initial.”
Rather, the group stated that it was focusing on the next steps.
On X, the social media site that was formerly known as Twitter, the company wrote, “We are working together to figure out the details.” “I sincerely appreciate your patience during this.”