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OpenAI\u2019s shareholders have fired Sam Altman once before, and they\u2019re thinking about doing it again. According to the Wall Street Journal, some of OpenAI\u2019s backers are starting to question whether Altman, who is increasingly having his attention monopolized by side projects, is the right guy to take the company public. Instead, their eyes are wandering toward another prominent tech exec.<\/p>\n
The doubts about Altman\u2019s fitness to serve as CEO of a publicly traded company apparently date back to that initial ouster, when some members of OpenAI\u2019s board raised questions about some of Altman\u2019s other investments. Altman, who has claimed to have no stake in OpenAI to avoid being driven by financial motivators, makes much of his money on other projects\u2014and he\u2019s increasingly tried to get his day job to pay for his side gigs.<\/p>\n
Per the Journal, Altman recently asked the board of OpenAI to lead a funding round for Helion Energy, a nuclear fusion startup in which Altman is a major shareholder, and was, up until a few weeks ago, a board member. He stepped down so that a partnership between OpenAI and Helion could move forward. Altman also reportedly wanted OpenAI to lend financial backing to upstart rocket maker Stoke Space, and at one point floated an acquisition of the firm. Altman is a shareholder in the SpaceX competitor via his venture capital firm Hydrazine.<\/p>\n
OpenAI has decided that it\u2019s done spending time on side projects, internally, and will instead keep its eyes on its core products, but that apparently hasn\u2019t applied to Altman, who can\u2019t help but dabble. In addition to having an interest in space and energy, Altman also has his creepy human verification company, World. While he hasn\u2019t explicitly crossed streams between OpenAI and World yet, the two are a pretty obvious pair, if not simply symbiotic in their relationship.<\/p>\n
It probably doesn\u2019t help that Altman himself doesn\u2019t really seem to think he\u2019s cut out to be CEO for the IPO. In an appearance on the Big Technology podcast, Altman said he was \u201czero percent\u201d excited to be the head of a publicly traded company.\u00a0\u201cAm I excited for OpenAI to be a public company? In some ways I am, and in some ways I think it\u2019d be really annoying,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s probably annoying to the board that their current CEO seems to hate his job. No wonder they\u2019re reportedly looking elsewhere. According to the Wall Street Journal, the current favorite to take the spot is current OpenAI board chair and former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor\u2014the guy who co-created Google Maps, served as CTO at Facebook, and was the chair of Twitter before Elon Musk bought it. That\u2019s quite a diverse background, but the difference between Taylor and Altman seems to be that Taylor was focused on only one role at a time, while Altman wants to do it all at once.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n