Who are the big winners of the Sam Altman soap opera at OpenAI?

The dismissal of Sam Altman, his hiring at Microsoft, then his return to the head of OpenAI – at the origin of chatGPT – have kept the tech world in suspense in recent days. The world of artificial intelligence is no longer quite the same. So who are the big winners but also the big losers of this crazy week?

It took Steve Jobs twelve years to return to the helm of Apple. Jack Dorsey at Twitter, seven years old. Sam Altman didn’t even take five days. He is the first big winner of this unexpected vaudeville in Silicon Valley. He who was one of the six founders of OpenAI with Elon Musk, in particular, in December 2015. He who was not yet known to the general public. He who found himself at the mercy of a real internal coup d’état; of a decision of a Board of Directors less aggressive, and more cautious than him, in relation to artificial intelligence and its dangers.

His CEO chair and a new legitimacy

Sam Altman therefore regained his CEO chair, thanks to pressure from OpenAI’s main investors, but also from two thirds of the employees who threatened to follow him to Microsoft. It also gained new legitimacy, and a renewed Board of Directors, with the replacement of three of its members, notably by Larry Summers, the former US Secretary of the Treasury under Clinton. And so, winner No. 1: Sam Altman, but also his lieutenant, Greg Brockman, another co-founder, left and returned with him. Not to mention the fact that we can already imagine the series on Netflix.

Second big winner of this chaotic weekend: it’s Microsoft and its boss, Satya Nadella. In a message on .

Real false arrival at Microsoft

Let’s go back nine days, remembering that Microsoft invested 13 billion dollars in OpenAI for now 49% of the capital. For Satya Nadella, there are only two possible options: either Altman’s reinstatement at OpenAI, or his arrival at Microsoft.

The two men talk very quickly. And it is this second option which seems to be confirmed at the end of last weekend. An entire floor, in the premises of LinkedIn – owned by Microsoft since 2016 – is also ready to welcome all those who follow in Sam Altman’s footsteps. A sort of golden Noah’s Ark, but also a plan B. The ideal outcome was reintegration. And it is no coincidence that on Wednesday, November 22, Microsoft shares reached their all-time high, at nearly $380…

And the losers? We had already talked a lot about chatGPT, but we had never talked so much about its parent company. However, OpenAI also gave an image of great fragility, hence the importance of new governance. And if our future depends on a company where everything can collapse in a few hours, as we saw last weekend, that’s not very reassuring.

Finally, who has heard of Meta, Google, Amazon or Apple in recent days, apart from Black Friday promotions?