Months after Microsoft took an observer seat on OpenAI’s board, the company is stepping down from the non-voting seat.
In a letter sent to OpenAI on Tuesday, Microsoft said the company has seen enough progress in the AI company and is confident in its direction, according to Axios.
OpenAI has stated that after this change, there will be no more observers on the board. This is likely to rule out reports that Apple gets an observer seat.
“We are grateful to Microsoft for their confidence in our board and the direction of the company, and we look forward to continuing our successful partnership,” OpenAI said in a statement to TechCrunch.
“Under the leadership of CFO Sarah Fryer, we are building a new approach to informing and engaging key strategic partners — like Microsoft and Apple — and investors — like Thrive Capital and Khosla Ventures.”
Microsoft took over as controller after Sam Altman was eventually fired and reappointed by OpenAI last year, with most of the board reshuffled — except for Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo. OpenAI’s new board consists of former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, Instacart CEO Fidji Simo, former Sony Corp executive vice president Nicole Seligman, former Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation CEO Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former National Security Agency chief Paul Nakasone, and Sam Altman, apart from D’Angelo.
Since the shake-up at OpenAI last year, some prominent researchers, such as Andrej Karpathy and Ilya Sutskever, have left the company. After his passing, Sutskever founded a new AI company called Safe Super Intelligence Company(SSI), with a focus on improving AI safety.