35-Year-Old Female CEO Takes Helm at OpenAI, Marking a Watershed Moment in the AI Era
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Today (November 18), OpenAI announced on its official website that former CEO Sam Altman has been removed from his position and will leave the board and the company. Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati will serve as interim CEO, effective immediately.
This means CEO Altman has been ousted by the board—this "most outstanding post-85 entrepreneur" was once regarded as the new power center in Silicon Valley.
The new CEO, Mira Murati, is only 35 years old. She joined OpenAI in 2018 as Chief Technology Officer and was dubbed "the creator of ChatGPT" by Time magazine. Previously, Murati worked at Tesla, leading the development of the Model X.
As is well known, OpenAI has been the hottest unicorn in the tech world this year, and no one expected such a dramatic turn of events.
Overnight, he was fired.
Leaving OpenAI
This departure was far from graceful.
In an official announcement on OpenAI's website, the board delivered a blunt accusation against Altman—he had not been consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to fulfill its responsibilities. The board no longer had confidence in his capacity to continue leading OpenAI.
The announcement also emphasized that Altman's departure followed a deliberate and thorough review process by the board.
"OpenAI was deliberately structured to advance our mission: ensuring that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. The board remains fully committed to this mission," the statement read. While expressing gratitude for Altman's numerous contributions in founding and developing OpenAI, the board stated, "new leadership is necessary as the company moves forward."
Shortly after the announcement was made, Sam Altman responded on social media:
"I truly enjoyed my time at OpenAI. It transformed me personally, and I hoped it would transform the world. Most importantly, I loved working with such talented people." Regarding his next steps, Altman mentioned he would have more to say later.
This news caught OpenAI employees off guard. Around the same time, OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman also announced his resignation on social media. The announcement noted that he would step down as board chairman but continue in his company role, reporting to the CEO.
Interestingly, another OpenAI employee who was fired alongside Altman shared a widely circulated statement: "Today, I was fired from OpenAI along with my boss Sam... No one told me why I was fired, but Sam sent me a 'wtf' text, and then I found my Slack and Gmail accounts disabled."
It can be said that OpenAI was born from the collaboration of Altman, Brockman, and Musk. Unexpectedly, just a year after ChatGPT's release, the three have already parted ways.
Currently, OpenAI's board members include Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI's Chief Scientist; Adam D’Angelo, CEO of Quora and an independent director; Tasha McCauley, a tech entrepreneur; and Helen Toner from Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology.
In May, OpenAI secured over $10 billion in funding, becoming the fastest-growing unicorn globally. Despite the founder's departure, Microsoft, OpenAI's largest shareholder, seems unaffected. Spokesperson Frank Shaw stated, "We have a long-term partnership with OpenAI, and Microsoft remains committed to Mira and her team to usher in the next era of AI for our customers."
A week prior, a major tech event took place in Los Angeles, where GPTs were unveiled to much fanfare. This "tech industry Spring Festival Gala" left countless AI enthusiasts sleepless with excitement.
At the time, Sam Altman, the father of ChatGPT, stood at the center of the stage. In 45 minutes, he recounted GPT's journey over the past year, reminiscent of Steve Jobs stepping onto a dark stage a decade ago, heralding the arrival of the next "Apple moment."
However, a week later, when the launch event was still being savored by countless people, the creator stepped down.
The Making of the Hottest Unicorn
Everything seemed to be a coincidence of fate. In April 1985, Jobs was ousted from Apple in a power struggle, the same year Altman was born.
In 2003, Altman was admitted to the Computer Science Department at Stanford University but dropped out two years later to embark on an entrepreneurial journey.
Destiny always favors these intelligent "rebels." In 2005, the 19-year-old Altman co-founded Loopt, a location-based service provider, with two classmates. By 2012, the company was acquired for $43 million, allowing Altman to achieve financial freedom at an early age. He was only 27 that year.
During his entrepreneurial journey, Loopt became one of the first eight companies funded by the startup incubator Y Combinator (YC). Through this, Altman met Paul Graham, the founder of YC and a revered figure in Silicon Valley's startup scene. Graham, impressed by the young entrepreneur two decades his junior, found a kindred spirit in him.
In 2014, Graham chose Altman to succeed him as the president of Y Combinator. A year later, at a private gathering in Silicon Valley's venture capital hub, Altman and tech luminaries, including Tesla founder Elon Musk, pondered a profound question: "What is the most beautiful thing we possess for the future of humanity?"
This question emerged alongside their discussion on artificial intelligence. Everyone present agreed that the advancement of AI could impact or even threaten human safety, necessitating immediate action. Amidst the clinking of glasses, a nonprofit AI lab—OpenAI—was born, with the mission to ensure artificial intelligence does not eradicate humanity.
At that gathering, OpenAI garnered support from a roster of Silicon Valley titans, including Musk, Amazon's founder, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and Peter Thiel, who collectively pledged $1 billion in donations and investments to the new venture. For its first four years, OpenAI relied heavily on their financial backing to sustain its operations.
However, Altman quickly realized that the computational costs of training large neural networks amounted to tens of millions of dollars, and the labor costs for R&D personnel were also exorbitant, rapidly depleting their funds. Even the most utopian technological visions must confront the realities of 'daily necessities.' At this point, Altman and Musk clashed over talent disputes and differing development philosophies.
After a power struggle, Musk shifted his focus to Tesla and SpaceX, ceasing all financial support for OpenAI. Altman, meanwhile, stepped away from Y Combinator (YC) to formally take the reins at OpenAI. By 2019, OpenAI was financially strained, prompting Altman to announce its restructuring into a for-profit entity to secure the necessary funding for AI model development.
The turning point came with Microsoft's involvement. Altman flew to Seattle to personally demonstrate OpenAI's AI models to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. At the time, Microsoft was seeking AI technology to compete with Google, and the two parties quickly reached an agreement. Altman successfully secured a $1 billion investment from Microsoft, marking OpenAI's official transition to a commercial path.
Next came the birth of ChatGPT, propelling OpenAI's rapid rise. Top investors like Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive, K2 Global, and Founders Fund flocked to the company, driving its valuation to skyrocket in a short period. According to a September report by The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI's latest valuation discussions placed it between $80 billion and $90 billion—nearly triple its earlier valuation this year.
From the beginning to the end, Altman has promised not to own any shares in OpenAI.
Before Altman, a "divine apple" fell upon Jobs, revolutionizing human life scenarios. Now, it seems the experiences of the two founders are strikingly similar.
35-Year-Old Female CEO Takes the Helm
The AI era has begun to show a watershed moment.
With Altman's departure, the current successor is 35-year-old female CEO Mira Murati.
This young CEO has an impressive background. Records show that Mira Murati was born in Albania and earned a degree in mechanical engineering from Dartmouth College in the United States. After graduation, she worked as a senior researcher at Google and Microsoft. In 2013, Murati joined Tesla, where she led the design, development, and launch of Tesla vehicle products like the Model X, as well as innovative projects in the aerospace sector.
In 2018, when OpenAI was still struggling with funding issues, Murati joined the company and later led a 375-person team to develop the OpenAI GPT-3 model. In May 2022, she was promoted to Chief Technology Officer (CTO), further driving OpenAI's decision to test its tools in the public domain. It was under her leadership that ChatGPT left the lab and was made available to the public.
There's an interesting side note—55 days after ChatGPT's launch, OpenAI's six-member core team held a meeting in San Francisco to discuss the massive impact and future development of ChatGPT post-release. The central figure of the meeting was Murati, who was already considered one of the most important figures at OpenAI at the time.
With each iteration of ChatGPT, Mira Murati has increasingly come to the forefront. In the latest announcement, OpenAI's board gave her exceptionally high praise—
"Mira has been part of OpenAI's leadership team for five years and has played a crucial role in transforming OpenAI into a global leader in artificial intelligence. She possesses a unique skill set and deep understanding of the company's values, operations, and business, having led the company's research, product, and safety initiatives."
The announcement also stated, "Given her long tenure at the company and her close involvement in all aspects of its work, including her experience in AI governance and policy, the board believes she is uniquely qualified and expects her to transition smoothly during the formal search for a permanent CEO."
Murati is one of the industry insiders who firmly supports AI regulation. In previous media interviews, she stated that the ultimate goal of AI technology is to serve humanity, and thus it should center on human interests and needs to address real-world problems. Time magazine once described her: "Mira Murati can straightforwardly discuss the dangers of AI while making you feel everything will be alright."
This philosophy may diverge significantly from Altman's. Industry analysts suggest that the recent internal conflict likely stems from differing visions for AI's future development. In contrast, Altman harbors greater ambitions for AI. He has publicly stated, "AI hasn't reached the point where regulation is necessary yet."
In fact, it has been less than a year since ChatGPT's official release, yet discussions about AI and large models have already proliferated.
Beyond OpenAI's internal debates, earlier this year, an open letter titled Pause Giant AI Experiments circulated, calling for all AI labs to immediately halt training AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. The letter was signed by numerous prominent figures, including Altman's name at one point, though it was later removed.
Meanwhile, on this side of the ocean, debates rage over whether large-scale AI model development should proceed and how domestic startups should approach iterating on foreign models.
At the beginning of the year, the birth of ChatGPT triggered global excitement - the tech circle hasn't witnessed such fervor in a long time. Investors flocked to Silicon Valley seeking projects, while industry leaders rapidly launched startups, giving rise to unicorns like Baichuan Intelligence and Zhipu AI in record time. While the boom continues, skyrocketing valuations of many startups hint at looming crises.
At the recently concluded 2023 Xili Lake Forum, Baidu founder and CEO Robin Li stated in his speech that the true mark of humanity entering the AI era isn't producing numerous large models, but rather creating many AI-native applications. He bluntly remarked, 'Continuously redeveloping foundational large models represents an enormous waste of social resources.'
As one AI-focused investor lamented, 'Do we really need so many AI large models?' This is perhaps the question that deserves deeper reflection from all entrepreneurs riding the AI wave.