Shortly after Microsoft hired Altman and his crew earlier today, The Verge reports that OpenAI’s board appointed Emmett Shear as its new CEO, replacing Murati in its second leadership change in four days.
Emmett Shear is a Yale University alumnus who co-founded Twitch, the video-streaming platform, in 2011 and served as its CEO till March 2023. In a post on X, Shear admits that Altman’s removal has been “handled very badly.”
Today I got a call inviting me to consider a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to become the interim CEO of @OpenAI. After consulting with my family and reflecting on it for just a few hours, I accepted. I had recently resigned from my role as CEO of Twitch due to the birth of my…
— Emmett Shear (@eshear) November 20, 2023
The newly appointed chief executive wants to hire an independent investigator to dig more into the events that led to Altman’s firing and generate a report in the next 30 days. Further, Shear wants to reform the management and leadership team to stop more employees from leaving the company.
Interestingly, Shear also says that OpenAI did not fire Altman over “any specific disagreement on safety,” denying the rumors about the ouster connected to the pace at which the former CEO was rolling out products to sign up customers and boost the overall revenue.