OpenAI Director Who Helped Oust Altman Now Key

Player in Startup's Future

Adam D’Angelo will continue to serve on the board despite previously agreeing to
oust Altman as CEO and running a company that competes with ChatGPT.

Photographer: Nicolas Maeterlinck/AFP/Getty Images

Save
5:42

Two days after Sam Altman reached an agreement with OpenAI to return as its
chief executive, he spent part of his Thanksgiving with Adam D’Angelo, one of the
company’s board members who had fired him the week prior.

Their hours-long meeting, which Altman called

(https://twitter.com/sama/status/1727858661677240767?
ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet) “really nice,”
highlights D’Angelo’s unique role in a corporate drama that has captivated Silicon
Valley — and the importance of their relationship in restoring some stability at the
world’s best-known artificial intelligence startup. As part of the deal to bring Altman
back, the board is set to be completely overhauled, with one exception: D’Angelo will
stay on as a director.

D’Angelo’s staying power at the company may have surprised some given his part in
ousting Altman for not being “consistently candid in his communications with the
board.” In an interview (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-
20/openai-investors-led-by-thrive-angle-to-bring-back-altman) during the leadership
drama, Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures — one of OpenAI’s earliest
investors — said he believed D’Angelo remained firm on his decision, despite how
much the move riled investors and employees. After nearly all of OpenAI’s staff
threatened to quit, however, D’Angelo became a key figure in negotiations with
Altman about his return.

D’Angelo’s involvement throughout the OpenAI saga has brought new attention and
scrutiny to a longtime Silicon Valley insider. As the co-founder of Quora, a question-
and-answer website, and an early Facebook executive, D’Angelo is well-known in the
industry. When Kevin Systrom launched Instagram and encountered technical
issues, he thought: “Who’s, like, the smartest person I know who I can call up?” The
answer, as he later told
(https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/14/technology/instagram-founders-were-
helped-by-bay-area-
connections.html#:~:text=%E2%80%9CWho's%2C%20like%2C%20the%20smartest,c
hief%20technology%20officer%20at%20Facebook.) The New York Times, was
D’Angelo. But the Quora CEO has also been described as a private, calculated leader
by people who’ve worked with him — and one with some prior history in surprise
corporate ousters.

His position on the board has also raised eyebrows

(https://x.com/vin_sachi/status/1727051352101286346?s=20) because Quora has
been in increasingly direct competition with OpenAI’s best-known service: ChatGPT.
From the start, a powerful AI chatbot that can answer questions in seconds risked
undercutting at least some of Quora’s pitch to users. Shortly after OpenAI launched
ChatGPT a year ago, Quora introduced Poe, a platform that allows people to ask
questions from various AI chatbots, including ChatGPT. In late October, Poe
introduced an option for developers to monetize the custom bots they build using
its tools. The next month, OpenAI announced users would be able to build
customized versions of ChatGPT – and make money from their creations in a new
GPT store.

The situation is unusual, said Kellie McElhaney, who teaches corporate social
responsibility at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
OpenAI’s board was set up as a nonprofit, which generally do not have fiduciary
constraints that are as carefully vetted as for-profit entities, McElhaney said. While
D’Angelo remains on the board, one of his cohorts left due to concerns about
conflicts of interest. Venture capitalist and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman
departed OpenAI’s board earlier this year, citing his growing number of investments
in AI companies.

“It feels like a breakdown of trust with multiple parties,” said McElhaney. “In some
situations, you say the board took their eye off the ball. Here, nobody knows what
that ball is, and where it’s going.”

In a statement, a Quora spokesperson said Poe is “a neutral platform.” The service

“provides consumers around the world with access to AI models from OpenAI,
Anthropic, Google, Meta, and many other developers,” the spokesperson said.
“Quora is not in the business of training these models ourselves; our role is to
enable those who do train models to reach a large audience.”

OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment. A person familiar with the
situation said OpenAI’s board appreciated having the perspective of a customer like
Quora among its directors.
Adam D'Angelo, co-founder of Quora Inc., leaves the morning session in Sun Valley, Idaho, U.S., on Wednesday, July 6,
2011.Photographer: Matt Staver

D’Angelo has said little publicly since Altman’s ousting, but as rumors flared about
his conflicts and motives, he reshared a post on X, formerly Twitter, from Replit CEO
Amjad Masad. “Have known Adam D’Angelo for many years,” Masad wrote.
“Although I have not spoken to him in a while, the idea that he went crazy or is being
vindictive over some feature overlap or any of the other rumors seems just wrong.”

While Altman’s ouster shocked the industry, it wasn’t D’Angelo’s first experience
suddenly removing the leader of a company. In 2012, his co-founder at Quora,
Charlie Cheever, was also pushed out. In response to a question on Quora about
Cheever’s employment status, D’Angelo said, “We decided it was best” for his co-
founder to step away from day-to-day work at the company.

Cheever had little notice or understanding of the breakdown, according to a person

familiar with the matter. It was so sudden that employees visited Cheever’s home in
tears, asking why he had left. It appeared there was little communication about the
decision or why it was made, even to staff, the person said. The co-founders have
hardly been in touch since.

In the decade since, D’Angelo has continued building Quora into a platform to share
knowledge of all kinds – even though it has a long way to go before living up to the
lofty prediction of Quora investor Keith Rabois in 2010 that it “will be the most
valuable company produced post 2005. Period.” Quora has raised about $300
million from big names in Silicon Valley, according to PitchBook, but nearly 15 years
after launching, it has yet to go public or be acquired. The company was valued at
$2 billion as of 2019, according to PitchBook.

Six years ago, in response to a question

(https://quorasessionswithadamdangelo.quora.com/Do-you-worry-that-AGI-
artificial-general-intelligence-will-obviate-the-need-for-a-structured-knowledge-
repository-1) on Quora, D’Angelo said he expected AI could help his startup “in all
kinds of ways” as the technology “gets more powerful,” including by helping “people
write better answers.” But he also suggested all bets may be off if and when AI
reaches a point where it “can do anything a human can do.”
“I think some form of knowledge sharing will be important in that world, but AI
safety is a much bigger concern,” he wrote. “I think it’s good that some people are
thinking about the safety issues now, but I don’t personally think it’s constructive for
me to worry about that world as opposed to just adapting as it gets closer.”

The next year, he joined the board of OpenAI.

29 novembre 2023 at 14:51 UTC+1

Updated on
29 novembre 2023 at 17:20 UTC+1
Save
Stability AI (https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/2140776D:LN), the British artificial
intelligence startup behind the Stable Diffusion image generator, has explored
selling the company as management faces increased pressure from investors over
its financial position.

The London-based firm has presented itself as an acquisition target in recent

weeks, and held early-stage conversations with multiple companies, according to
several people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the
discussions were private. A deal is not imminent and the company could cut the
process short without selling, they said.