Former OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman are being hired by Microsoft. On Friday, OpenAI terminated Altman’s employment after the board stated it “no longer has confidence in his capability to continue leading OpenAI.” Following an extended weekend of deliberations regarding the possibility of Altman rejoining OpenAI, Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, declared that Greg Brockman and Sam Altman would be joining the organization to assume leadership roles on its novel advanced AI research team.

“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,” says Nadella. “We look forward to moving quickly to provide them with the resources needed for their success.” In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Altman acknowledged he was joining Microsoft by reposting Nadella with the message “the mission continues.” Nadella responded by providing some hints at how he sees Altman’s role at Microsoft. “We’ve learned a lot over the years about how to give founders and innovators space to build independent identities and cultures within Microsoft, including GitHub, Mojang Studios, and LinkedIn, and I’m looking forward to having you do the same.” A new advanced AI research team has been established by Microsoft, under the leadership of Altman and Brockman. It follows Microsoft’s announcement a week ago that it has developed a custom AI processor capable of training large language models and potentially eliminating the need for an expensive reliance on Nvidia. Also designed for cloud applications is an Arm-based CPU developed by Microsoft. The purpose of both custom silicon processors is to supply power to the Azure data centers.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/20/23968829/microsoft-hires-sam-altman-greg-brockman-employees-openai