I believe those are investor the in for-profit organization while the board is responsible for the non-profit org, and I believe the for-profit is bound to the mission of the non profit but not the other way around.
But I'm sure someone here knows the legal structure better than I do, I just quickly skimmed over
If the board was trying to further erode trust in their decision making, doesn’t inspire confidence that all of this happened in the span of a weekend:
- fired, CTO announced as interim CEO
- wait, come back
- never mind, oh and a new interim CEO
One might assume that the board has known 'whatever they know' for quite some time, possibly discussed quietly behind the scenes, which includes them scouting out potential interim CEOs.
Then when it becomes clear that negotiations won't solve the problem the board drops the hammer and lets the other side make their move. If they act professionally and like adults, well, maybe there's room for negotiation after all.
If, on the other hand, they do weird childish shit, well... guess not. In with the new guy!
the entire organisational structure of openAI was literally designed for exactly that. Like Mozilla, the for-profit arm of the company is legally subject to the non-profit.
Microsoft hasn't released all its investment into OpenAI, and I think this could trigger some special contingency in their agreement to stopping doing so.
I think one thing is for certain: OpenAI now, won't worth that much any more.
Maybe they can. Maybe they can't. We don't even know if "the talks" to return Sama were just investors writing angry emails to Ilya and him replying "nuh-ah".
This hinges on Open ai being as forthcoming with new models as they previously were. I'm not sure that's going to happen. Certainly the new board will be more inherently against it. Not sure what outs they have though besides the obvious one.
The information? Yes, they are highly focused on the tech industry and very diligent. They make most (all?) of their revenue on subscriptions, so that limits their incentives to make clickbait content.
Yes, this is one of the top outlets focused on the valley tech scene. It's subscription based, and they are more expensive than most others, which is probably why you haven't seen it posted much.
The whole affair has been bizarre. Professionals discuss all this stuff out of the public eye and execute when they have a plan. Every single move from all parties here has been run and gun and looks like amateur hour. These people do business like the characters on Succession.
I think trump and elon sort of made it ok to showcase the shit online. Like how YC got involved with fighting other VCs on twitter. I have huge respect for YC and never thought they would do that, but here we are.
Again a stark reminder that all of these guys from Ray Dalio to the run of the mill SF VC are all just normal, twisted people who don't know much better about anything and merely had a run of good luck. Stop paying attention to them.
Feels like the board were "true believers" in the nonprofit/human first/guardrails and sam just wanted to zuckerberg openai by growing as fast as possible and in the end the true believers won.
What did they win exactly? This is far from the only effort to develop AI models. They were a leader for a time, but seem unlikely to continue in that position.
I don’t really understand what safety work is or entails here, given OpenAI will surely not be the only group to achieve AGI (assuming any group does.) What stops other companies from offering similar models with no (or just less) regard for safety/alignment, which may even be seen as a sort of competitive edge against other providers? Would the “safety work” being done or thought about somehow affect other eventual players in the market? Even regulation has the same challenges, but with nations instead of companies, and AFAIK that was more Sam’s domain than Ilya’s. It almost seems like acceleration for the sake of establishing a monopolistic presence in the market to prevent other players from viability, and then working in safety afterwards, would give a better chance of safety long-term… but that of course also seems very unrealistic. I think more broadly, if we’re concerned with the safety of humanity as a species we can’t think about the safety problem on the timescale of individual companies or people, or even governments. I do wonder how Ilya and team are thinking about this.
Microsoft owns the GPUs and has rights to continue operating current models. The only value OpenAI had was cohesion of engineering talent as it relates to model development velocity.
> Only a fraction of Microsoft’s $10 billion investment in OpenAI has been wired to the startup, while a significant portion of the funding, divided into tranches, is in the form of cloud compute purchases instead of cash, according to people familiar with their agreement.
> That gives the software giant significant leverage as it sorts through the fallout from the ouster of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The firm’s board said on Friday that it had lost confidence in his ability to lead, without giving additional details.
> One person familiar with the matter said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella believes OpenAI’s directors mishandled Altman’s firing and the action has destabilized a key partner for the company. It’s unclear if OpenAI, which has been racking up expenses as it goes on a hiring spree and pours resources into technological developments, violated its contract with Microsoft by suddenly ousting Altman.
> Microsoft has certain rights to OpenAI’s intellectual property so if their relationship were to break down, Microsoft would still be able to run OpenAI’s current models on its servers.
To the people running OpenAI? I suppose in the same way you’d invest in a developing country where your investment was always at risk of a dictator saying you were no longer an investor. Just hire OpenAI engineers away and buy stability. Let the board try to make a better offer with no resources of their own. I do not doubt there is a small cohort who drinks the aligned safety koolaid; for everyone else, there is cash and equity.
ChatGPT Plus was never intended to be OpenAI's main revenue stream. The real cash is in the GPT API, which they're currently making good money on, but which also directly competes with a GPT API offered by Azure.
OP might have a point: if OpenAI declines, devs might prefer the Azure API over the OpenAI API for factors like stability, quality, response time, better integration with existing Azure stack, etc.
MS has already gotten a lot out of OpenAI... who knows, the next steps could be OpenAI focusing more on R&D and not products like a good non-profit. ChatGPT is handed over to MS and merged into Bing. Anything could happen.
The amount of cash that Microsoft has paid to OpenAI is relatively small, much less than the $13B number that gets thrown around.
And I'm sure they're getting their money's worth. E.g. the last time I heard or thought of Bing (outside of the ChatGPT context) was years ago. Now I see it all the time. That's worth $$$$$ to them.
Even funnier is someone (in a now flagged and dead'd post) accused me of being a misogynist for daring to even think of questioning her experience or capability as CEO.
If you are CEO for a day do you get to wear a paper crown like at Burger King?
I don't know if you're misogynist but her qualifications are fine. She's not CEO anymore because she wanted Sam and Greg back not because she somehow failed her 1 day duties.
I'm not disputing her qualifications but going to war against the board is failing your duties. In a for profit it can work if you have your shareholders on your side but it's clear here that this maneuver can't work.
Foundational AI companies fracturing is going to be good for the overall market.
Just like Anthropic spinning off from OpenAI brought some very cool research (particularly liked the functional introspection vs node based stuff), Altman going into his own venture to compete will help diversify the overall space.
And while many seem to be thinking this is going to bode poorly for OpenAI, I think perhaps long term it might be a good thing. Ilya is quite impressive and his having greater influence with Altman gone may result in them exploring more interesting avenues that have long term value which might not have been as prioritized with a focus on maximizing short term rollouts.
While the way the board handled it wasn't great optics, this is probably going to be an overall positive shakeup for AI and LLMs in 2024-2025.
It probably is a good thing, not because Ilya is going to safeguard humanity’s future, but because it’s better to have a very competitive field rather than one break away winner. No lone genius will invent AGI. It will be a collective effort of dozens of labs, trading talent and methods. If OpenAI is a few years ahead now, they will quickly lose that edge due to this infighting and others will catch up.
The problems that had been solved remain solved, no need for a genius for those problems. They will also have solutions that the public doesn't know about yet.
The default winners in this race, in the medium-term horizon (~18 months), are the existing incumbents: Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta. OpenAI was positioned to be able to compete. I am not sure a diluted OpenAI will be.
I think Ilya is getting what he wanted. Although, that may yet have disastrous consequences for the company if employees follow through on mass quitting, thus freeing him up. But if they can quickly prevent people leaving in the short term, maybe urgent discontent will pass.
That would have opened them up to a lawsuit (while employment is "at will", you can still get sued for negligence or baseless slandering). A statement retracting claims for such a high profile move would be a pretty solid piece of evidence in such a case.
Bad news for you, their last CEO was too. Sam Altman signed a statement saying "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war." Looks like you're not on any of their team, but you do have crypto king Marc Andreessen.
Did anyone believe that he seriously believed in that? I thought the consensus was he was angling for a government backed monopoly with OpenAI as the “steward” of large AI models.
This view was totally divorced from reality. Sam literally laid out his own case for AI posing an extinction risk on his blog in 2015, before OpenAI was even founded: https://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part-1
"Development of superhuman machine intelligence (SMI) [1] is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity."
None of them seem to have mentioned it, but indeed it is confirmed he had very little equity in the company.
This seems like a fairly unconventional idea in a capitalist world where Altman has made all his money on exactly that - equity.
Seems like it has ultimately bit him, the investors, and the board in the ass. Poor incentive structure in the corporate governance is going to really mess with people's heads.
I’m glad people in this thread are supporting the OpenAI board in this decision. There seems to be too much celebrity worship around Altman from all the tech/crypto bros.
Also, any new competition started by Altman would be good for the ecosystem in general.
I'd have agreed with you if it was an extensive board with many experts, both technical and policy, without any strong conflict of interests.
But at this point, we have Ilya who clearly has strong difference of opinions with Sam, Adam D'Angelo, whose company Poe has a conflict of interest with the existance of for profit OpenAI and their GPT store/customizable agents, and two other board members.
Are you for real? "Difference of opinions" isn't a problem for a board, it's exactly why multiple people are on one. And Adam will not have any conflict of interest with Poe very shortly.
It is a problem when you pretty much fired two board members who would've been against Ilyas opinion.
Maybe Adam will not have any conflict in a few months, but he does now. He did when he and others got rid of Greg and Sam from the board. That's my point.
Adam solved the issue very “elegantly” and Ilya can finally continue allocating more compute for his research interests. A dream of a board as you can see by the reactions of the investors ;)
I would have been extremely uneasy if Altman had the power to get back as CEO after this kind of ousting but I didn't really support ousting him like that in the first place, especially if this didn't reach a fever pitch over some much more capable model.
On one hand, I worry that it doesn't represent anything more than following the herd. For a long time, and not long ago, the herd followed people like Musk, Bankman-Fried, etc., and other cults of personality. I think a lot had to do with Trump - even people who say they hated him have followed his model (he was the President, after all) of behavior, business, and personal character, even non-famous people I know personally.
As best I can say regarding such a broad, poorly defined topic: Due to the brazen, distasteful, dangerous megalomania and seeing real consequences at Twitter and FTX, and others (Theranos, etc.), that brazen megalomania seems to have re-acquired the bad reputation that common sense has eternally given it, in every place and time.
Obviously, it's a ridiculous, self-destructive, dangerous idea. Whatever the cause, I'm glad people seem to be regaining their senses - but will they do it quickly and completely enough, will they be manipulated into blaming someone else (a massive risk in the post-truth world that accepts dis/misinformation), and will the megalomaniacs retain their attitudes and power, and then use it to suppress others.
I think in the long run, the board doing (even though somewhat clumsily) what it's supposed to do, which is to ensure the Charter, will emerge as the prevailing view. Apart from that, OpenAI was becoming too dominant, and a new entrant led by Altman would be a gift thing in the long run.
And, for joy: Baidu, Alibaba, Samsung et al. have a golden chance to close the current gap. Loud cheers and high-fives from the ea/decel camp at helping hobble the U.S. leader.
FWIW, the board structure is more in the spotlight, especially Adam's, since Quora's Poe chatbot uses OpenAI's APIs. And on top of that, Sam was an investor in Quora (2018).
Her move makes even less sense than what the board did. The board told her the day before that they're firing Sam, so she obviously accepted it. But, one day later she caves and sides with Sam (that's what the heart tweet means)? That's weak leadership and resolve.
yeah... as more folks join the no-uppercase wave, it makes me consider using capitals again. but, its just a lot more of an expressive way to talk to another human in a text based format.
There was a weird coordinated show of support for Altman by a lot of his employees, quote tweeting "i love the openai team so much"
I also found it weird and cultish. I guess it's not so different than signing a birthday card going around the office tho. "Sorry you got fired, see you at the next burning man"
On the other hand, if Kyle was ousted for pushing too hard too fast at Cruise, that seems like out of the frying pan into the fire. See https://archive.is/Vqjpr
Wait why would you think this is would be related to Kyle?
Kyle's story was brewing from the moment GM appointed their attorney to manage Cruise - everyone knew there was gonna be restructuring of the executive team after the incident.
If anything, it was a convenient time for Kyle to step down as it wouldn't get a lot of prime time thanks to OpenAI drama.
The real winner in all this is once again Tim Cook, the only tech CEO to not constantly flail around dripping in flop sweat chasing the buzzword du jour.
I know it's small potatoes but those other CEOs have added hundreds of millions of dollars in ARR to their bottom lines on AI, in particular open ai. Microsoft doesn't think you're a real product line til a billion plus ARR but still, it's not nothing.
I think it's still pretty early to know how lasting these ARRs are. We are still early on the hype cycle here. Chat based language models have definitely found good uses, so I don't think we'll ever see them go away, but I'm just cautious about how much net revenue these will really generate (particularly when the expense of the cards needed to train/run them is so high).
It amazes me that more don't follow the example of the most successful company in the world, maybe in the history of the world (hard to make comparisons across eras).
I think Adam D'Angelo has a very strong conflict of interest and shouldn't have been on the board of OpenAI.
I'm sure Quora views took a hit after ChatGPT. Not like Quora was any good before ChatGPT, they just managed to get to the top of Google results for a lot of common questions.
Now, Poe by Quora was trying to go big on custom agents. The GPT Agents announcement on DevDay was a fundamental threat to Poe in many ways.
I'm convinced that Adam D'Angelo probably had some influence on the other two board members too. He should've left the board of OpenAI the moment OpenAI and his own company were competing in the same space.
Don't forget Tasha McCauley's husband, Joseph Gordon Levitt, has been vocally anti-AI during the SAG-AFTRA strike, an event for which AI was a huge point of contention. It's a poisoned board.
> What do you imagine he could have done about the board of a non-profit as CEO and fellow board-member?
As board members, both Altman and Brockman would have presumably had to vote on any changes to the board - including reduction in number of members and appointment of new members.
Do you think the composition of the board before Friday could've been reached without some level of support from Altman and Brockman?
I could be wrong, but I thought I saw something about Quora's use of LLMs improving their SEO (the LLM answer to most questions is embedded on the Quora page) and potentially driving more traffic.
If you look at Poe as a value add for existing Quora users, instead of a feature that is going to grow their userbase, it's still a net win for Quora even if GPT agents exist simultaneously.
Quora SEO'd their way to the top of most Google searches before the LLMs era.
Poe is not really meant as a value addition for Quora users. Poe was a general AI chat company, like ChatGPT.
Poe's unique selling point was their 'chat agents with customizable instructions/personality' and they were charging people money for this while pretty much building on OpenAI GPT API. They also had an agents store.
During DevDay when Sam announced GPTAgents and store, that was a fundamental threat to Poes existance.
Adam was appointed to the OpenAI board in April 2018, long before ChatGPT and Poe. He's always been somewhat interested/involved in AI/ML so the appointment broadly makes sense to me.
Also keep in mind that a year earlier in Spring 2017 Sam Altman led Quora's Series D, after YC previously joined in on Quora's Series C in 2014. So the two of them clearly had some pre-existing relationship.
I don't think OpenAI and Quora (the product) are a serious conflict of interest. You claim "I'm sure Quora views took a hit after ChatGPT" but I really doubt that's true in any meaningful way. Quora's struggles are a separate issue and predate the GPT craze of the last year.
Nor were Poe and OpenAI competitors until recently; Poe was simply building on top of OpenAI models, the same as hundreds of other ventures in the space right now.
However...I do agree that the GPTs announcement two weeks ago now creates a very clear conflict of interest--OpenAI is now competing directly against Poe. And because of that, I agree that Adam probably should leave the board.
The timing also raises the question of whether booting Sam is in any way related to the GPTs launch and to Poe. Perhaps Sam wasn't candid about the fact that they were about to be competing with Adam's company. The whole thing is messy and not a good look and exactly why you try to avoid these conflicts of interest to begin with.
I never said Adam should've never been on board. I was arguing about the part after Poe was competing with OpenAI after DevDay. That's where he has a clear, very strong conflict of interest and to be honest that's where the board/Adam took the most impactful decision that OpenAI board ever made.
On the other hand, Sam & Greg had the opportunity to confront Adam about the obvious conflict and likely could have forced him to step down if they wanted him to. They made their choice. Zero mention about Adam & Poe in the leaks from Sam's camp also suggests Sam doesn't fault Adam's character here.
I didn't read OpenAI's company charter, but forcing Adam down would probably require a board majority. It's not like they would have made Adam step down if they wanted to.
Nope, Poe was always building on OpenAI API and their GPTs. In fact Poe was one of the first companies to get access to GPT-4-32k context length a few months ago and they were the first to make it accessible to their users.
The number of board members should've increased alongside OpenAI's growth. Too few board members means the higher potential for corruptibility and too much power being held by each member. It makes no sense for OpenAI in the future to be worth $1T and a leader in AI while still being governed by a small inner circle.
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[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 417 ms ] thread[1] Sorry - the full list is behind a paywall https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/openai/company_finan...
But I'm sure someone here knows the legal structure better than I do, I just quickly skimmed over
https://openai.com/our-structure
Surely Emmett must be really capable but still seems a bit of wild card entry
Then when it becomes clear that negotiations won't solve the problem the board drops the hammer and lets the other side make their move. If they act professionally and like adults, well, maybe there's room for negotiation after all.
If, on the other hand, they do weird childish shit, well... guess not. In with the new guy!
This industry is changing far too fast for the legal calendar.
By the time the lawsuits are resolved, it will all be irrelevant.
I expect them to continue to be relevant, but just one of the chorus, no longer the leader.
I think one thing is for certain: OpenAI now, won't worth that much any more.
https://twitter.com/gfodor/status/1725750082119811537
Microsoft want OpenAI to do research, and give them the model to run on Azure.
They certainly don't need OpenAI competing in consumer products. ChatGPT could have been a Micrsoft product in an only slightly different timeline.
And they'd rather they didn't compete in API serving, they'd rather everyone currently using OpenAI had to shift to Azure.
Edit: This was in reply to the prior, non-paywalled URL. Comment moved by dang.
Again a stark reminder that all of these guys from Ray Dalio to the run of the mill SF VC are all just normal, twisted people who don't know much better about anything and merely had a run of good luck. Stop paying attention to them.
:-)
By cutting its other revenue streams OpenAI has lost all of its leverage.
So now will shrink to being effectively an external dev team for Bing / Windows.
https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/ai/openai-azure-s...
https://www.semafor.com/article/11/18/2023/openai-has-receiv...
> Only a fraction of Microsoft’s $10 billion investment in OpenAI has been wired to the startup, while a significant portion of the funding, divided into tranches, is in the form of cloud compute purchases instead of cash, according to people familiar with their agreement.
> That gives the software giant significant leverage as it sorts through the fallout from the ouster of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The firm’s board said on Friday that it had lost confidence in his ability to lead, without giving additional details.
> One person familiar with the matter said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella believes OpenAI’s directors mishandled Altman’s firing and the action has destabilized a key partner for the company. It’s unclear if OpenAI, which has been racking up expenses as it goes on a hiring spree and pours resources into technological developments, violated its contract with Microsoft by suddenly ousting Altman.
> Microsoft has certain rights to OpenAI’s intellectual property so if their relationship were to break down, Microsoft would still be able to run OpenAI’s current models on its servers.
OP might have a point: if OpenAI declines, devs might prefer the Azure API over the OpenAI API for factors like stability, quality, response time, better integration with existing Azure stack, etc.
It really is a massive change in direction and a lost opportunity to set their own course.
And I'm sure they're getting their money's worth. E.g. the last time I heard or thought of Bing (outside of the ChatGPT context) was years ago. Now I see it all the time. That's worth $$$$$ to them.
Also if some of the wilder motives behind this shitshow are true then Microsoft will never see GPT-5.
If you are CEO for a day do you get to wear a paper crown like at Burger King?
Just like Anthropic spinning off from OpenAI brought some very cool research (particularly liked the functional introspection vs node based stuff), Altman going into his own venture to compete will help diversify the overall space.
And while many seem to be thinking this is going to bode poorly for OpenAI, I think perhaps long term it might be a good thing. Ilya is quite impressive and his having greater influence with Altman gone may result in them exploring more interesting avenues that have long term value which might not have been as prioritized with a focus on maximizing short term rollouts.
While the way the board handled it wasn't great optics, this is probably going to be an overall positive shakeup for AI and LLMs in 2024-2025.
https://twitter.com/robbensinger/status/1726039794197872939
Did anyone believe that he seriously believed in that? I thought the consensus was he was angling for a government backed monopoly with OpenAI as the “steward” of large AI models.
"Development of superhuman machine intelligence (SMI) [1] is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity."
This seems like a fairly unconventional idea in a capitalist world where Altman has made all his money on exactly that - equity.
Seems like it has ultimately bit him, the investors, and the board in the ass. Poor incentive structure in the corporate governance is going to really mess with people's heads.
But at this point, we have Ilya who clearly has strong difference of opinions with Sam, Adam D'Angelo, whose company Poe has a conflict of interest with the existance of for profit OpenAI and their GPT store/customizable agents, and two other board members.
Maybe Adam will not have any conflict in a few months, but he does now. He did when he and others got rid of Greg and Sam from the board. That's my point.
I would have been extremely uneasy if Altman had the power to get back as CEO after this kind of ousting but I didn't really support ousting him like that in the first place, especially if this didn't reach a fever pitch over some much more capable model.
As best I can say regarding such a broad, poorly defined topic: Due to the brazen, distasteful, dangerous megalomania and seeing real consequences at Twitter and FTX, and others (Theranos, etc.), that brazen megalomania seems to have re-acquired the bad reputation that common sense has eternally given it, in every place and time.
Obviously, it's a ridiculous, self-destructive, dangerous idea. Whatever the cause, I'm glad people seem to be regaining their senses - but will they do it quickly and completely enough, will they be manipulated into blaming someone else (a massive risk in the post-truth world that accepts dis/misinformation), and will the megalomaniacs retain their attitudes and power, and then use it to suppress others.
Follow their dear saviour into a new venture or stay on a ship with their shares that will begin to sink at markets open.
Microsoft maybe holding a very huge bag. Probably will sue.
I also found it weird and cultish. I guess it's not so different than signing a birthday card going around the office tho. "Sorry you got fired, see you at the next burning man"
Like the board presumably called her and said, "hey Sam is out, you're the CEO for now, more details to come"
And then in the next 48 hours she had a chance to talk to Sam and others and realize that she was on his side.
I wouldn’t take over as CEO or interim-CEO unless I knew why the previous CEO was fired and was OK with the process and reasoning.
The amount of weight people here give to an _emoji_ on this site... Rampant, unnecessary, baseless speculation in every comment thread bout Altman.
Just wait til monday next time. These ultra wealthy over-privileged Worldcoin fucks are not worth this much attention.
And the fact that Emmett is only interim should give you a hint something is up.
That they didn't complete the process of a permanent CEO over the weekend after firing and then negotiating with Altman?
Kyle's story was brewing from the moment GM appointed their attorney to manage Cruise - everyone knew there was gonna be restructuring of the executive team after the incident.
If anything, it was a convenient time for Kyle to step down as it wouldn't get a lot of prime time thanks to OpenAI drama.
https://x.com/moridinamael/status/1725893666663768321?s=46
Apple has rarely been first to market with technology. However they often are first to have a cohesive user experience that integrates it in.
I'm sure Quora views took a hit after ChatGPT. Not like Quora was any good before ChatGPT, they just managed to get to the top of Google results for a lot of common questions.
Now, Poe by Quora was trying to go big on custom agents. The GPT Agents announcement on DevDay was a fundamental threat to Poe in many ways.
I'm convinced that Adam D'Angelo probably had some influence on the other two board members too. He should've left the board of OpenAI the moment OpenAI and his own company were competing in the same space.
The smartest white hot startup on the planet has the smallest board and most inexperienced
How did that even happen on Sam’s watch?
My take: he always thought Ilya would have his back with Greg and the 3 overrule ruled anybody , so they kept it small
Bad idea
What do you imagine he could have done about the board of a non-profit as CEO and fellow board-member?
As board members, both Altman and Brockman would have presumably had to vote on any changes to the board - including reduction in number of members and appointment of new members.
Do you think the composition of the board before Friday could've been reached without some level of support from Altman and Brockman?
There is nuance to this point.
If you look at Poe as a value add for existing Quora users, instead of a feature that is going to grow their userbase, it's still a net win for Quora even if GPT agents exist simultaneously.
Poe is not really meant as a value addition for Quora users. Poe was a general AI chat company, like ChatGPT.
Poe's unique selling point was their 'chat agents with customizable instructions/personality' and they were charging people money for this while pretty much building on OpenAI GPT API. They also had an agents store.
During DevDay when Sam announced GPTAgents and store, that was a fundamental threat to Poes existance.
Also keep in mind that a year earlier in Spring 2017 Sam Altman led Quora's Series D, after YC previously joined in on Quora's Series C in 2014. So the two of them clearly had some pre-existing relationship.
I don't think OpenAI and Quora (the product) are a serious conflict of interest. You claim "I'm sure Quora views took a hit after ChatGPT" but I really doubt that's true in any meaningful way. Quora's struggles are a separate issue and predate the GPT craze of the last year.
Nor were Poe and OpenAI competitors until recently; Poe was simply building on top of OpenAI models, the same as hundreds of other ventures in the space right now.
However...I do agree that the GPTs announcement two weeks ago now creates a very clear conflict of interest--OpenAI is now competing directly against Poe. And because of that, I agree that Adam probably should leave the board.
The timing also raises the question of whether booting Sam is in any way related to the GPTs launch and to Poe. Perhaps Sam wasn't candid about the fact that they were about to be competing with Adam's company. The whole thing is messy and not a good look and exactly why you try to avoid these conflicts of interest to begin with.
https://openai.com/our-structure