WilmerHale, a prominent U.S. law firm, is close to completing a thorough review of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and his ouster from the artificial intelligence start-up late last year, two people with knowledge of the process said. .
The investigation, when completed, could provide insight into what went on behind the scenes with Mr Altman and OpenAI’s former board, which fired him on November 17 before bringing him back five days later. OpenAI, which is valued at more than $80 billion, has sparked a frenzy about artificial intelligence and could help set the direction of the transformative technology.
Mr. Altman, 38, has told people in recent weeks that the investigation is nearing completion, the two people familiar with the matter said. The results could be delivered to OpenAI’s board as soon as early next month, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of non-disclosure agreements.
OpenAI declined to comment. WilmerHale did not respond to a request for comment.
Investigators have spent the past three months interviewing OpenAI employees and executives after the former board told it it no longer had confidence in Mr. Altman’s ability to run the company, the people said. The council said Mr Altman had not been “consistently candid in his communications”, although it did not provide details.
Privately, the board was concerned that Mr. Altman was not fully sharing his plans to raise money from investors in the Middle East for an artificial intelligence chip project, people with knowledge of the matter said.
After his ouster, Mr. Altman waged a fierce battle against some of OpenAI’s directors to be reinstated as CEO. He won but made concessions. He agreed that OpenAI would hire an outside law firm to investigate his ouster and did not regain his own seat on the company’s board. But he managed to revamp the board, removing two members and adding two more.
OpenAI nearly collapsed during the leadership crisis, jeopardizing a potential windfall for its investors, such as Microsoft, and its employees. In the months since Mr. Altman’s reinstatement, insiders have sought to limit the fallout, advising employees to keep potential dissent quiet for fear of jeopardizing the company’s fortunes.
OpenAI is considered a leader in genetic artificial intelligence, technology that can generate text, sounds and images from short messages. It is also among several companies aspiring to build artificial general intelligence, or AGI, a machine that can do anything the human brain can do.
Meta, Google, Microsoft and others are also racing to develop such technology. The leaders of these companies believe that AGI will revolutionize the computing industry, as well as the global economy and workforce.
