in A series of posts about X Paul Graham, co-founder of startup accelerator Y Combinator, on Thursday denied allegations that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman pressured him to step down as president of Y Combinator in 2019 over a potential conflict of interest.
“People are [Y Combinator] “Sam Altman was fired,” Graham wrote. “That is not true.”
Altman became a partner at Y Combinator in 2011, initially working part-time, and in February 2014, Graham appointed him president of Y Combinator.
Altman co-founded the nonprofit OpenAI in 2015 with Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Y Combinator founding partner Jessica Livingston, and has since raised $1 billion.
For several years, Altman split his time between Y Combinator and OpenAI, effectively running both, but when OpenAI announced in 2019 that it would launch a for-profit subsidiary with Altman as CEO, Graham said, Livingston told Altman he had to choose between OpenAI or Y Combinator.
They told him, and he agreed, that if he was going to work on OpenAI full time, he should find someone else to run YC,” Graham wrote. “If he had said he was going to find someone else to be CEO of OpenAI so he could focus 100% on YC, we would have been fine with that.”
Graham’s rendition of events is inconsistent report Altman was forced to resign from Y Combinator after allegations from partners that he was prioritizing his personal projects, including OpenAI, over his duties as president. according to According to a Washington Post article from November last year, Graham cut short an international trip and personally fired Altman.
Helen Toner was one of the former OpenAI executives who tried to remove Altman as CEO over alleged misconduct before he relinquished the role. Claimed During an appearance on the Ted AI Show podcast, Altman said that the real reasons for his departure from Y Combinator were “hidden at the time.”
Some Y Combinator partners reportedly took particular issue with Altman’s indirect stake in OpenAI, which he held while he was president of Y Combinator: Y Combinator’s later-stage fund invested $10 million in OpenAI’s for-profit subsidiary.
However, Graham said the investment was made before Altman started working full-time at OpenAI and that he was unaware of it.
“This was not a very large investment for these funds,” Graham wrote, “and I only found out about this five minutes ago, so it obviously doesn’t affect me.”
Graham’s post was apparently Editorial An article in The Economist by OpenAI board members Bret Taylor and Larry Summers countered claims made by Tonner and former OpenAI board member Tasha McCauley that Altman was not reliably able to withstand the pressures of profit-driven investing.
Toner and McCauley may be right. The Information reports that Altman In consideration of Investors, especially Microsoft, are turning OpenAI into a commercial company. push The company will prioritise commercial projects.