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Anyone else find it strange that startup founders of the magnitude of Sam & Greg would join a gigantic corporation as employees? It sounds very out of line of
by waihtis 3y ago
Anyone else find it strange that startup founders of the magnitude of Sam & Greg would join a gigantic corporation as employees?
It sounds very out of line of what you'd expect.
- eddtries 3y agoMaybe Sam thinks OpenAI will be so important he has a shot at CEO of Microsoft in a couple years?
- jakey_bakey 3y agoBut Satya is making a few 100 mil a year, tops. Sam could easily make himself a billionaire with one raise. And who wants to control all of Microsoft, that's a whole lot of headaches
- haldujai 3y agoAs in liquidate a billion in one raise? Is that kosher these days?
- sekai 3y agoExactly, he could just launch a new company, most of the current OpenAI staff would follow him.
- hef19898 3y agoShould tell you something that he didn't. And no, I am not talking about ethics here.
- eddtries 3y agoThere must be an insane number of non-competes though, to stop that? Especially with the amount of VC funding - that must have been included?
- airspresso 3y agoNon-competes are not legally enforcable in California, or so I hear.
- eddtries 3y agoI think the only edge cases are for executives of companies, and even then it's pretty limited, but I imagine this could be one of the examples. IANAL though - it's just from what I've seen discussed elsewhere. https://www.ottingerlaw.com/blog/executives-should-not-ignore-non-compete-agreements https://www.ottingerlaw.com/blog/executives-should-not-ignor... https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=16602.&nodeTreePath=9.2.1&lawCode=BPC https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
- ibrarmalik 3y agoThe new models and data would stay at OpenAI. You can have thousands of researchers and compute, but if you don’t have “it”, you are behind (ask Google). In Microsoft he still has access to the models, and that’s all he needs to execute his ideas.
- synaesthesisx 3y agoYes, however they’ll be shielded from lawsuits from OpenAI at Microsoft.
- esskay 3y agoThey could, but they'd be massively hamstrung by lack of GPU's. Pretty much all supply is locked up for a good few years right now.
- quickthrower2 3y agoAssuming a MAG wont offer it.
- ethanbond 3y ago> most of the current OpenAI staff would follow him Source please? This just keeps getting repeated but there’s extremely limited public support and neither Sam’s nor the board’s decisions indicate he has a whole lot of leverage.
- nextlevelwizard 3y agoAnd if governments squeeze on AI your start up is worth pennies over night. Earning 100 MILLION per year already removes any possible financial restrictions you had. Why do you need to have 10x that? Heck even earning "just" 10 millions per year will make all of your financial concerns go away. Greed is hell of a thing
- MikeTheRocker 3y agoI suspect for people like Sam who are compulsively ambitious and competitive, it's not about the dollars. It's about winning. Further, based on anecdotes from friends and Twitter who know Sam personally, I'm inclined to believe he's genuinely motivated by building something that "alters the timeline", so to speak.
- ah765 3y agoBeing the guy who built AGI will alter the timeline the most, so I think he'll be much more interested in that than being CEO of Microsoft.
- chx 3y agoAGI is decades if not centuries away. Cranking a plausible sentence generator to be even more plausible will not get there. I do not understand how people suddenly completely lost their minds.
- sensanaty 3y agoThe hype wave really is something else, eh? People are suddenly talking as if these advanced chatbots are on the precipice of genuine AGI that can run any system you throw at it, it's absolute lunacy
- chx 3y ago> The hype wave really is something else, eh? I am old enough to remember the "How Blockchain Is Solving the World Hunger Crisis" articles but this new wave is even crazier.
- vidarh 3y agoAccording to [1], Nadella's base salary was $2.5m and stock awards and other compensation brought the total to ~$55m in 2022. [1] https://microsoft.gcs-web.com/node/31056/html https://microsoft.gcs-web.com/node/31056/html
- haldujai 3y agoI believe his total comp since becoming CEO passed 1B this summer, 9 years or so.
- tsunamifury 3y agoSam already is a billionaire
- chirau 3y agoSam is not a billionaire. By all industry accepted accounts (easily googlable), his net worth is in the range of 500 to 700 million. Do you have a source for your assertion?
- greatpostman 3y agoHe’s definitely a billionaire
- chirau 3y agoHe is not on Forbes billionaire list. All the other somewhat reliable sources do not have him as one. So what is your source for your assertion?
- eddtries 3y agoSam is rich, I assume being CEO of one of the worlds largest companies is a far greater award than extra money when you're at the billionaire level, especially at 38. But I do think this is probably non-compete related too.
- estomagordo 3y agoWhat's the functional difference between a billion and a hundred million?
- jamesyc 3y agoApproximately 1 billion.
- quickthrower2 3y agoA billion means you can fund yourself for a really big idea. Not that you should!
- qwery 3y agoLol, maybe. Ballmer was a friend of Gates, was 44 years old and had worked at Microsoft for 20 years (2000-1980) already when he became CEO. Nadella was also forty-something and had worked at Microsoft for 22 years (2014-1992) when he got the job.
- danwee 3y agoWhat? If anything a startup founder (in general) wants to become a gigantic corporation. The bigger the better.
- ascorbic 3y agoThere's an infinite difference between turning your startup into a giant corporation and getting a job at one.
- Maxion 3y ago> It sounds very out of line of what you'd expect. Except if Sam and Greg have some anti-compete clauses. If they join MS, they have a nice 10 billion USD leverage against any lawsuites.
- alvis 3y agoSo Sam & Greg can stay focus on their work rather than getting distracted by all the lawsuits. It isn’t a bad thing. Just not sure how they can get they want under the corporate culture?
- reedciccio 3y agoIn California the anti-compete clauses are not enforceable, afaik
- ffgjgf1 3y agoI guess that’s more applicable to ordinary employees. Using trade secrets obtained from your previous employer would still be problematic
- Arelius 3y agoIt's complicated. In the case of the CEO it is possibly enforceable. But going to the primary funder, after being fired in a move without notification of that same funder? Likely with long complicated contracts that may contemplate the idea of notification of change of executive staff? I don't know, even of strictly "enforceable" I doubt we will see it enforced. And if so. I'm sure the settlement will be fairly gentle. Edit: Actually, a quick skim of the relevant code, the only relevant exception seems to be about owners selling their ownership interest. Seemingly, since Sam doesn't own OpenAI shares, this exception would seem to not apply. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=BPC§ionNum=16601 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....
- gpt5 3y agonon-competes are extremely hard to enforce in California. Sam would literally have to download Open AI trade secrets into a USB drive to get in trouble.
- SpicyLemonZest 3y agoIt certainly sounds out of line with all the reporting that Altman was talking about starting a new company and could trivially fundraise for it. Was that just as much kayfabe as the idea of bringing him back?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bayindirh 3y agoNope. They're following the path to power, money, and maybe continued fame. That's all.
- schiffern 3y agoI'll bet Microsoft offered him a very sweet deal, which for Sam means lots of autonomy. Microsoft is happy. They get to wrap this movie before the markets open. Edit: I also agree with bayindirh below. These things can both be true.
- bayindirh 3y agoThey had to. Also, that doesn't mean Microsoft won't collect the outcome of this deal with its interest over time. Microsoft is the master of that craft. Microsoft did not offer this because they're some altruistic company which wanted to provide free shelter to a unfairly battered, homeless ex-CEO.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- paganel 3y agoPresumably they’ll both get their C-level positions out of the gate (for that AI entity MS is setting up specially for this) so not just “mere” employees. But, yeah, kind of confusing, especially for Altman. He was the kind of guy on the way to become worth $100 billion and more, with enough luck, meaning to be the next Musk or Zuckerberg of AI, but if he chooses to remain inside a behemoth like MS the “most” that he can aspire to is a few hundred millions, maybe a billion or two at the most, but nothing more than that.
- ffgjgf1 3y ago> He was the kind of guy on the way to become worth $100 billion and more, with enough luck, Was he though? If I understand correctly he didn’t have any equity in the for profit org. Of OpenAI. IIRC he also publicly said that he doesn’t “need” more than a few hundred million (and who knows, not inconceivable that he might actually feel that).
- antupis 3y agoI bet MS probably bankrolls a subsidiary or lightweight spinoff for AGI if they are under MS, they can keep the original research and code.
- cornel_io 3y agoThey're likely going to be the ones who manage the OpenAI relationship...what better way to fuck the people who fucked them than by becoming the ones who literally control the resources that they need?
- user_named 3y agoHilarious. The look on Ilyas face when these two show up at the office for their "sync", or perhaps he's ordered to travel to a location of the owner/client's choosing.
- suslik 3y agoOpenAI can also jump ship and get a nice deal with amazon or google. In fact, right now they are ripe for the taking.
- chirau 3y agoTechnical debt. Azure was already second nature for OpenAI and so there is very little friction in moving their work and infrastructure. The relationships are already there and the personnel will likely follow easily as well. They are also likely enticed by the possibility of being heads of special projects and AI at the second largest tech company, meaning deep pockets, easy marketing and freedom to roam. Oh, and those GPUs.
- raggi 3y agoThey need computers. I'd assume this came with a substantial budget promise.
- mirzap 3y agoThey will probably run a subsidiary under the MS umbrella and profit hugely in the next few years. Also, MS could easily dump OAI in the next few months to year.
- blackoil 3y agoSam had no stake in OpenAI. So, any potential deca billion value is hypothetical. He would have to do a U-turn and fight with the board to get his cut. Now he'll get his cut from MS. This AI division will have some further restructuring. Edit: Sam is CEO of the new AI division.
- soumyadeb 3y agoSeems like a good compromise? OpenAI continues to develop core AI offered over API. Microsoft builds the developer ecosystem around it -- that's Sam's expertise anyway. Microsoft has made a bunch of investment in the developer ecosystem in GitHub and that fits the theme. Assuming Sam sticks around. Also, the way the tweet is worded (looking forward to working with OpenAI), seems like its a truce negotiated by Satya?
- kjksf 3y agoThis is Microsoft starting a copy machine to replace OpenAI with in-house tech in medium to long term. Apparently Microsoft already had plans to spend $50 billion on cloud hardware. Now they are getting software talent and insider knowledge to replace OpenAI software with in-house tech built by Sam, Greg and others that will join. Satya just pulled a kill move on OpenAI.
- soumyadeb 3y agoDoes Microsoft (under the OpenAI agreement) have access to the model code etc or just the output? If not, they would have to rebuild it. Not sure if its obvious that people would leave OpenAI in troves to join Microsoft just to be with Sam.
- haldujai 3y agoI doubt it would be hard for Microsoft to rebuild, Microsoft Research has made many excellent contributions to transformers for many years now, DeepSpeed is a notable example. I don’t think they’ve had the will/need to have done this but they most likely already have the talent.
- quickthrower2 3y agoEmbrace…
- klabb3 3y agoYeah agree, this feels like a very big hug.
- kjksf 3y agoTheir alternative is to start a new AI company. At this point in time a new AI company would be bottle-necked by lack of NVIDIA GPUs. They are sold out for the medium term future. So if Sam and Greg were to start a new AI company, even with billions of initial capital (very likely given their street cred) they would spend at a minimum several months just acquiring the hardware needed to compete with OpenAI. With Microsoft they have the hardware from day one and unlimited capital. At the same time their competitor, OpenAI, gets most of the money from Microsoft (a deal negotiated by Sam, BTW). So Microsoft decided to compete with OpenAI. This is the worst possible outcome for OpenAI: they loose talent, pretty much loose their main source of cash (not today but medium to long term) and get cash rich and GPU-rich competitor who's now their main customer.
- sekai 3y ago> So Microsoft decided to compete with OpenAI They already do, though, has everyone forgot they got a Microsoft Research division?
- tudorw 3y agoNope, VirtualWiFi looked promising in 2006.
- quickthrower2 3y agoThey could get a infra deal with AWS, Google, NVidia or AMD even :-). Or they write the AI that runs on your M3 That said the Microsoft offer came quickly than Amazon can deliver a 3090 to your house so…
- idonotknowwhy 3y agoWould have been amazing if they joined Intel. No tsmc bottleneck, Intel probably having trouble offloading their arc gpus, etc
- ruszki 3y agoSome components of some Intel CPUs are made by TSMC. So, I’m not convinced that there wouldn’t be “TSMC bottleneck”.
- Apocryphon 3y agoWorked(?) for Carmack and Luckey
- jjcm 3y agoSatya probably offered the one resource they couldn’t buy at the scale/speed they need: GPUs. Both time on Azure’s cloud, as well as promise of some of the first Azure Maia 100 and Cobalt 100 chips.
- divbzero 3y agoPlus continued access to OpenAI technology.
- sangnoir 3y agoSatya probably offered the one resource they couldn’t buy at the scale/speed they need: OpenAI models & future work. Altman wouldn't have had (legal) access to these anywhere else, and Microsoft wouldn't have had Sam Altman controlling OpenAI tech in any other arrangement. This arrangement may be the best for all involved: Microsoft gets it's LLM geegaws based on OpenAI tech, Altman gets to build GPT marketplaces and engage whatever growth-hacking schemes he can dream of that may have been found distasteful by colleagues at OpenAI, and OpenAI can focus on the core mission and fulfilling contractual obligations to Microsoft I foresee this new group building on top of (rather than completing with) OpenAI tech in the near-to-mid term, maybe competing in the long term of they manage to gather adequate talent, but it's going to be going against the cultural corporate headwinds. I wonder if Microsoft will tolerate the hardware side-gig and if this internal-startup will succeed or if it will end up being a managed exit to paper over OpenAIs abrupt transition (by public company standards). I guess we'll know in a year if he'll transition to an advisory position
- irthomasthomas 3y agoI bet there was no hardware side-gig. More likely it was a ruse to trigger the push from openai, so they can exfiltrate gpt5 to MS. Openai won't exist soon, since they rely on vouchers from MS to run. I can't see MS being a very forgiving partner, after being publicly blindsided, can you?
- ezoe 3y agoNo. They need a lot of money and computation resources to work on. In order to continue their work, they either A). raise a massive fund B). be employed by a big corp. There's no surprise they chose the latter. After all, MS has a research department on this domain.
- ssnistfajen 3y agoIt depends on what they are allowed to do as employees, which is probably in the process of being figured out right now.
- wokwokwok 3y agoThe only meaningful thing here that makes sense to me is that the “secret sauce” that openAI has is exclusively licensed to Microsoft. Which means, starting a competing startup means they can’t use it. Which makes their (potential) competing startup indistinguishable from the (many) other startups in this space competing with OpenAI. Does Sam really want to be a no-name research head of some obscure Microsoft research division? I don’t think so. Can’t really see any other reason for this that makes sense.
- 15457345234 3y agoSounds desperate to me, a bit like that 'I'm in the office' photo-op. A bit like having access to the models or whatever is sustaining him somehow lol
- nopromisessir 3y agoLol Desperate... Right... The guy met with the Arabs a few weeks back about billions in financing for a new venture. The guys desperate like I'm Donald duck.
- blitzar 3y agoSo he passed up billions to go work for microsoft ...
- 15457345234 3y agoDesperate
- nopromisessir 3y agoSpecial unit mate... Gonna have special rules. You think these cats are gonna be in the basement pushing papers? This is grade AAA talent that can go anywhere including a fresh outfit with 1 billion in the bank VC money day 1. Don't believe me? Check out the VC tweets... Sand hill pulled the checkbook the moment these guys might have been on the market.
- 15457345234 3y agoWonder if they'll take his call today!
- nopromisessir 3y agoLiterally the president would take Altman's call. What moon are y'all on. He can secure billions with a text message. Love ya anyway, cya this evening for the fuzzy meetup.
- ah765 3y agoI think Sam's goal is to create AGI, same as most of the other founders of OpenAI. If he just wanted money and power, he probably would have continued with YC or some other startup instead of joining the nonprofit and unproven OpenAI at the time. His opinion on the ideal path differs from Ilya's, but I'm guessing his goal remains the same. AGI is the most important thing to work on, and startups and corporations are just a means of getting there.
- nickfromseattle 3y ago>I think Sam's goal is to create AGI Supposedly his goal was the same as OpenAi --> AGI that benefits society instead of shareholders. Seems like a hard mission to accomplish within Microsoft.
- ah765 3y agoI imagine Sam's vision, both before and after this company change, is that he'll keep improving GPTs, while also setting up a thriving ecosystem through APIs, and AI will become a trillion dollar industry with him at the center. From there, maybe someone will come up with the revolutionary advance necessary to reach AGI. It may not necessarily be under his company, but he'll be the super successful AI guy and in a pretty strong position to influence things anyway.
- hobofan 3y agoJust because that's the goal they have written on the tin doesn't mean that that is/was their actual goal. Especially in the early days where the largest donor to OpenAI was Musk who was leading Tesla, a company way behind in AI capabilities, OpenAI looked like an obvious "Commoditize Your Complement" play. For quite some time where they were mainly publishing research and they could hide behind "we are just getting started" that guise held up nicely, but when they struck gold with Chat(GPT), their was more and more misalignment between their actions and their publicly stated goal.
- jampekka 3y agoLike Cyberdyne Systems was just a means of getting there.
- pyb 3y agoCurious to see how long Sam lasts as an employee.
- nopromisessir 3y agoIt's gonna be a special unit. He's not gonna be an employee. Once you lead at that level... It's max autonomy going forward. Source: Elon. Guy hates a board with power as much as Zuckerberg. Employee? Ha .. Out of the question.
- ethanbond 3y agoSo as a result Elon actually isn’t an employee… whereas Sam will be an employee, ultimately
- nopromisessir 3y agoThere are more structures available than simply gobbling something up and everyone is your employee. See openai investment with technology transfers and sunset clauses. They just did a new dance. They'll prod do something special for these guys. They would never be employees. That's for non Sam Altman's and non Brockmans. Brockman is prob already a billionaire from openai shares. No employees here. Big boys.
- ac130kz 3y agoI guess they were fired exactly for this reason: more money, less research and being actually "open". A "non-profit" called "Open"AI hiding GPT-4 behind a paywall with no source code with just a few hints in the papers, surreal.
- cowl 3y agoOr just accept that their image is overinflated just because they happened to be in the right place at the right time. Ofcourse they had a hand on building that successful team but do not underestimate the fact that, that successful team was build with the promise of nonprofit, AI for the benefit of all And few of them would have joined Microsoft out of principle.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jampekka 3y agoIsn't the exit exactly what you'd expect from startup founders?
- unsupp0rted 3y agoGuess who'll be running Microsoft after Satya, and what Microsoft's core offering / cash cow will be.
- nopromisessir 3y agoNever gonna happen. Satya runs the biggest race track. Altman trains pure breds trying to win the Kentucky derby repeatedly. Totally diff games. Both big bosses. Not equivalent and never will be. Totally diff career tracks.
- dangthrow 3y ago[flagged]
- nopromisessir 3y ago[flagged]
- jfoster 3y agoThey won't have to worry about raising capital or getting access to GPUs, and they've likely been promised a high degree of autonomy, almost certainly reporting directly to Nadella.
- mijoharas 3y agoSatya is saying they'll be an independent "startup" within Microsoft https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38344811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38344811
- waihtis 3y agocorporate startups are an oxymoron
- modeless 3y agoThey must be getting a king's ransom. Turns out sama didn't need equity, he got paid by getting fired.
- Havoc 3y agoI think the employees part is probably wrong here. Can’t imagine they’ll need to act like ones even if they are on paper
- mewpmewp2 3y agoIn the end it's just labels. What matters is what kind of funds will they be given, what they can work on, what sort of control they have over it.
- dbbk 3y agoFrom the sounds of it they're starting a new company within MSFT.
- kilroy123 3y agoA little bit, but I highly doubt it'll last long. I predict most of them will end up in a startup sooner rather than later.
- kozikow 3y agoWe don't know the structure of their new unit, do we? Sometimes "startup in a big corp" may really bring the best of both worlds (although in reality, 90% of such initiatives bring the worst of the two worlds). For many years, Microsoft Research had a reputation for giving researchers the most freedom. Probably even that's the reason why it hasn't been as successful as other bigcorp research labs.