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