I will return to OpenAI as CEO. Mira will return to her role as chief technology officer. The new initial Board of Directors will consist of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers and Adam D'Angelo.
I've never been more excited about the future. I'm extremely grateful for everyone's hard work during uncertain and unprecedented circumstances, and I believe our resilience and spirit set us apart from the rest in the industry. I feel very, very good about our chances of succeeding in our mission.
Before I begin what follows, I would like to express some gratitude.
I love and respect Ilya, I think he is a guiding light in this field and a treasure of humanity. I have zero ill will towards him. Although Ilya will no longer serve as a board member, we hope to continue our working relationship and are discussing how he can continue his work at OpenAI.
I'm grateful to Adam, Tasha, and Helen for working with us to find a solution that best served the mission. I'm delighted to continue working with Adam and sincerely thank Helen and Tasha for their input into this process.
Thanks also to Emmett, who played a key and constructive role in helping us achieve this outcome. Emmett’s dedication to AI safety and balancing stakeholder interests is evident.
Mira excelled throughout the entire process, serving the mission, team, and company selflessly from start to finish. She is an incredible leader and OpenAI would not be OpenAI without her. Thanks.
Greg and I are partners running the business. We've never quite figured out how to communicate this on the org chart, but we will. In the meantime, I just wanted to clarify. Thank you for everything you've done since the beginning and the way you've handled things from the beginning of this to last week.
The leadership team – Mira, Brad, Jason, Che, Hannah, Diane, Anna, Bob, Srinivas, Matt, Lilian, Miles, Jan, Wojciech, John, Jonathan, Pat, etc. – are clearly ready to operate without any company. I. They say one way to evaluate a CEO is how well you select and train your potential successor; on that metric, I did much better than I thought I would. It's clear to me that the company is in great hands, and I want everyone to know that. thank you all.
Jakub, Szymon, and Aleksander are all outstanding talents, and I'm delighted to have them back on board to push us and our research forward. Thanks.
To everyone on our team: I'm sure there will be books written about this period, and I hope the first thing they say is how amazing the entire team was. Now that we've been through this, we haven't lost a single employee. You are steadfast in supporting each other, this company, and our mission. One of the most important things for a team building AGI safely is the ability to handle stressful and uncertain situations and always maintain good judgment. Highest score. thank you all.
Satya, Kevin, Amy and Brad have been incredible partners throughout the entire process and had the right priorities from start to finish. If we fail to achieve our main goals, they have our backs and are ready to welcome us all. We clearly made the right choice to partner with Microsoft, and I'm pleased that our new board of directors has them as a non-voting observer. Thanks.
To our partners and users, thank you for sticking with us. We have definitely felt the outpouring of support and love and it has helped us all get through this. The fact that we haven't lost a single customer will make us work even harder to serve 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 to do incredible work in support of this mission. I don't know how they do it so well, but they do. Thanks.
As well as offering his continued unconditional love and support, Ollie has been putting his own life on hold to help in any way he can. Thank you and I love you.
So what's next? What's next?
We have three immediate priorities.
- Advancing our research programs and further investing in our full-stack security efforts has been critical to our work. Our research roadmap is clear; this is a very focused moment. I'm as excited as you; we're going to turn crisis into opportunity! I'm going to work with Mira on this.
- Continuously improve and deploy our products and serve our customers. It’s important that people experience the benefits and promise of artificial intelligence and have the opportunity to shape it. We always believe that excellent products are the best way to achieve this goal. I will work with Brad, Jason, and Anna to ensure that our strong commitment to our users, customers, partners, and governments around the world is clear.
- Bret, Larry and Adam will work very hard on the extremely important task of establishing a Board of Directors 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 critical steps so that everyone can have confidence in the stability of OpenAI.
I'm really looking forward to working with you on building AGI that works - the best team in the world, the best mission in the world.
Love
Sam
