Former OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Joins Microsoft

Microsoft has made major advances in artificial intelligence (AI), appointing former OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman to manage a new advanced AI research team. The decision to bring Altman and Brockman on board follows Altman’s departure from OpenAI, when the board fired him owing to a lack of faith in his leadership qualities.

Following a weekend of talks geared toward perhaps reintroducing Altman to OpenAI, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed that both Altman and Brockman will join Microsoft to lead the newly established advanced AI research division. Altman will take over as CEO of this innovative business.

Nadella expressed enthusiasm about the collaboration, stating,

“We’re extremely excited to share the news that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, together with colleagues, will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team. We look forward to moving quickly to provide them with the resources needed for their success.”

Altman revealed his transfer to Microsoft in a post on X (previously Twitter), where he shared Nadella’s statement and said, “The mission continues.” Nadella answered by elaborating on his vision for Altman’s job, underscoring Microsoft’s strategy of allowing entrepreneurs and innovators to forge their own identities and cultures within the organization.

This hiring decision is noteworthy since Microsoft normally allocates the title of CEO to CEOs of distinct or significant business units inside the corporation. The addition of “CEO” to Altman’s position for the advanced AI research team might indicate larger goals for Microsoft’s strategic project.

Brockman said that the new Microsoft team will include important OpenAI experts, such as Jakub Pachocki, director of research, who will assume head of Microsoft’s advanced AI research team. Other significant OpenAI personnel set to join Microsoft in senior capacities include research scientist Szymon Sidor and head of preparation Aleksander Madry.

After unsuccessful negotiations with OpenAI’s board to reinstate him as CEO, Altman immediately accepted a job offer from Microsoft. Instead, former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear has been named interim CEO. Altman had reportedly been pitching a separate startup to investors to build custom, Nvidia-rivaling AI tensor processing unit (TPU) chips. The project, with the code name “Tigris,” aims to create unique AI tensor processing unit (TPU) chips, gaining interest from investors like Microsoft.

The introduction of Microsoft’s advanced AI research team, headed by Altman and Brockman, comes on the heels of the company’s disclosure of a custom AI processor geared for training massive language models. To decrease its dependency on external sources such as Nvidia, the business is proactively building its own technology, including an Arm-based CPU for cloud applications.

Despite Altman’s departure from OpenAI, Microsoft remains a significant investor in the firm, with an estimated $10 billion investment. Microsoft’s cloud agreement with OpenAI remains exclusive, with Microsoft’s cloud services powering all OpenAI workloads that extend products, API services, and research.

Nadella reaffirmed Microsoft’s commitment to the OpenAI partnership, expressing confidence in the product roadmap and ability to grow. He is excited to work with Emmett Shear and OpenAI’s new leadership team, stressing Microsoft’s commitment to assisting customers and partners in the growing artificial intelligence ecosystem.