OpenAI shakeup, “this is a train wreck situation.”

Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst from Wedbush Securities Dan Ives spoke with CGTN Europe on the shakeup of OpenAI.

Transcript

00:00 Dan Ives, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Wedbush Securities.

00:05 Dan, welcome. Good to see you. What's going on here?

00:08 I mean, this is a train wreck situation because ultimately, Altman is the face of AI,

00:15 the golden child. That's really why Microsoft and others have invested.

00:20 You now had a four-person board on a Friday night, to the surprise of everyone, taking Altman

00:28 out of that position. Now he's gone. I'd expect that these of this board are numbered,

00:34 and I'd expect Altman could be back at OpenAI by tonight.

00:38 The boards say that he wasn't, and I quote, "candid in his communications." What does that

00:44 mean in English? I think everyone's trying to figure that out. I mean, this feels like a board

00:49 that had a vendetta against Altman. That's why it's been such a shock to the tech ecosystem and

00:58 to Wall Street that Altman was going to be out. Remember, Microsoft basically heard about this

01:03 two minutes before. You got Nadella, Microsoft, basically every investor that's ever invested

01:11 in OpenAI right now with a bullseye on the back of this board. I believe these board members

01:19 ultimately made a decision that was too hasty, not thought through, and now they're going to

01:24 probably have to pay for it. However, do Altman's critics have a point here in the sense that many

01:29 young tech firms, and we've reported on them many times, inevitably attract geniuses who might be

01:36 rather less experienced when it comes to, how shall I put it, business etiquette?

01:43 Look, I think to your point, that's also why you can't have a four-person board in a 501(c) at

01:50 OpenAI with people that have never been on boards before in terms of public boards and how to manage

01:55 this. You need a much more formulated board because decisions like this would never have been made.

02:04 That's the frustration here, is that the way this was handled, and I've covered tech for

02:11 almost 25 years, I've never seen a train wreck situation like this ever.

02:18 And why does it matter so much? I mean, what impact could this, as you describe,

02:23 this train wreck now, this shake-up, have on the company's future direction and its strategy?

02:30 Well, the biggest worry is that I'll call it the Altman lottery, the sweepstakes. Does Amazon get

02:37 that? Does Google, Apple, Elon Musk? Altman's the key to the whole thing. So the worry is that as

02:47 Altman leaves, developers will all follow. And that's really the fundamental issue here, is that

02:53 those four board members created a brush fire that they didn't recognize and they can't put out.

03:01 And that's why I think probably by the end of the day, those board members will be focused

03:07 on redoing their resume. Dan, good to talk to you. Keep in touch.

03:12 Dan Aye is Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Webbush Securities.