If you are behind on current events let me catch you up OpenAI's surprise firing of #SamAltman and the wild boardroom intrigue over the weekend. I will do my best to summarize events, analyze some of the players and their angles, and finally break down how these might matter to you. Short story: there was a clumsy midnight coup fueled by a known bad corporate governance situation, everything spiraled out of control, and lots of people aren't going to enjoy their holiday.
- OpenAI is hemorrhaging talent, has a board with no credibility with anyone, and will be lucky to avoid heavy-duty shareholder lawsuits. They could spiral into nothing.
- OpenAI's investors, outside of Microsoft, got screwed over to a semi-illegal degree and don't have great options. One not-great option they are talking about at this very second is shareholder lawsuits.
- Sam Altman is going to Microsoft. He had lots of options and he liked this one. Other people will go with him.
- Microsoft looked like the big loser last night yet they emerge today as the big winner. Altman puts them in a great position to build entirely within Microsoft and become the unquestioned leader in commercializing #LargeLanguageModels
- If you are at a large corporation that uses #Azure, and you were comfortable using #LLM inside Azure, this is a positive turn of events for you in the short to medium term. You are buying it from Microsoft will likely have better luck making it for you in house.