OpenAI’s unusual corporate setup—where a nonprofit board governs a business arm that raised outside money from investors—will remain for now. But as OpenAI’s board shed members over the past year—critically Reid Hoffman, who is also a director at Microsoft—Altman’s loyalist contingent shrank. That would free them from the nonprofit board, which doesn’t act on behalf of shareholders and has also instituted profit caps for investors. The company wooed engineers from other tech companies with high salaries and the promise of getting wildly rich off company shares. Many preferred to stay at OpenAI over Microsoft, which Altman planned to join earlier this week before he was reinstated as CEO.

Source: Wall Street Journal November 23, 2023 14:49 UTC