OpenAI doesn't plan to offer a board seat to Microsoft or other investors

twitter.com

27 points·mfiguiere··9 comments

Why would they offer a board seat to MS?

I would’ve thought that was part of the deal for getting Sam back. Thankful for this though

They invested $3B of capital and $7B worth of compute credits from Azure. In almost all cases an investment of 1/100th of that magnitude would earn a board seat, but OpenAI’s nonprofit structure needs to maintain a strong sense of independence to align with their charter.

They invested in the for-profit part, not the non-profit part. The board is for the non-profit organization.

Technically speaking the same Board of Directors is represented 4 times within that hierarchy, including the entity Microsoft is invested in which is one of the two entities that have investors in them and which still have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders, even as subsidiaries of the non-profit.

That’s where a lot of Microsoft’s leverage lies if it came down to a lawsuit over the last couple of weeks. If Microsoft wants a board seat, they’re going to get a board seat one way or another.

What fiduciary duties? The purple box on every investment and employment agreement states in no uncertain terms that the for-profit org is completely subordinate to the non-profit. IIRC it specifically states they don’t have any obligation to attempt to return money to investors.

I wonder what the carbon offset for that much compute looks like.

it's consuming more power than the whole country of Argentina /s

Must add to the title that this is a Scoop and not confirmed yet.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com