Microsoft Wins Big from OpenAI Crisis by Recruiting Sam Altman and Others

Sam Altman at the OpenAI office (photo: x @jasonkwon)

JAKARTA - On  Monday, November 20, Microsoft  emerged as a big winner from the crisis at OpenAI, by recruiting ousted CEO, Sam Altman. Apart from that, there are also  several other key members of the startup. This step was taken to prevent their potential departure to competitors and help deepen their position in the artificial intelligence race.

Instability in OpenAI since Friday November 17 has raised concerns about the impact on Microsoft. Moreover, the company ,  has invested billions of dollars and uses this pioneering technology for most of its offerings in artificial intelligence technology.

"The move ensures the "golden boy of artificial intelligence" stays with Microsoft," analysts said, as the company competes with Alphabet-owned Google  to dominate the fledgling industry.

Microsoft shares rose about 1.5%, with the company on track to add nearly  30 billion US dollars (Rp. 463.4 trillion)  to its current market value. This is almost the same as OpenAI's final valuation at the time of its last fundraising.

"If Microsoft loses Altman, he could go to Amazon, Google, Apple or any number of other tech companies," said Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives.

"Instead, he is now safely at Microsoft headquarters. We see Microsoft now in an even stronger position with Altman and Brockman at Microsoft running artificial intelligence," added Ives, quoted by VOI from Reuters.

Altman will lead a new research team at the software giant after his shock firing by OpenAI rocked the tech industry. He will be joined by Greg Brockman, another founder of OpenAI, as well as other researchers including Szymon Sidor.

Analysts also said more employees could move to Microsoft as the crisis could affect what is expected to be an $86 billion share sale by the startup, potentially affecting payouts to OpenAI employees.

"OpenAI's profit-oriented subsidiary is about to conduct a secondary offering at a valuation of more than US$80 billion. These 'Profit Participation Units' will be worth more than US$10 million to key employees. This will not happen now," says a chip industry newsletter , SemiAnalysis.

Several employees of the startup, including former interim CEO Mira Murati, said in a post on social media platform X on  Monday that "OpenAI is nothing without its people,"

At Microsoft, the team led by Altman will also likely have access to more necessary computing power, considering the company is the second-largest cloud player in the United States and has committed to spending billions of dollars to expand its data center capacity.

"If this team had gone the startup route, they would have had to spend significant time rebuilding GPT-4. In contrast, at Microsoft, they would have had access to most of the IP they would need for future products," SemiAnalysis said.