LISBON, PORTUGAL – NOVEMBER 07: LISBON, PORTUGAL – NOVEMBER 07: Emmett Shear, Twitch, on the Contentmakers 1 Stage Stage during day two of Web Summit 2018 at the Altice Arena on November 7, 2018 in Lisbon, Portugal. In 2018, more than 70,000 attendees from over 170 countries will fly to Lisbon for Web Summit, including over 1,500 startups, 1,200 speakers and 2,600 international journalists. (Photo by Eoin Noonan /Web Summit via Getty Images)
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It’s been just a few days since Sam Altman, the former CEO of OpenAI, was ousted in a shock move — and his replacement has already been named.
After a weekend of rumor and speculation, Emmett Shear — former co-founder and CEO of Twitch — confirmed he will take the top job at probably the most high-profile AI company in the world.
In a post on X early Monday, Shear said he got a call from the company asking him to become interim CEO of the company and that he had accepted, “after consulting with my family and reflecting on it for just a few hours.”
It comes after Altman, who led OpenAI through its development of the wildly popular generative artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, left after facing pressure from the board to step down.
The reasons behind his departure are unclear, but some insiders had expressed concern that Altman wasn’t the right fit for the company. He is involved in another company, the eyeball-scanning tech company Worldcoin, for example, and there were concerns that this may have served as a distraction.
Who is Emmett Shear?
Shear is a big name in Silicon Valley — but to most people, he is unknown.
Shear took Twitch — the live-streaming site he co-founded with Justin Kan, Michael Seibel, and Kyle Vogt in 2007 — from originally broadcasting the life of Kan 24/7, to a worldwide phenomenon.
Twitch was acquired by Amazon for $1 billion in 2014 and Shear stepped down as CEO of Twitch last year.
During his time at the company, he faced tensions from streamers who believed that the platform wasn’t defending their interests. It found itself locked in a tense battle with rival YouTube for talent, with the latter attracting several high-profile personalities from Twitch with lucrative exclusive broadcasting deals.
After Shear’s departure from the streaming site, he became a partner at Y Combinator, the startup accelerator. Altman was formerly president of Y Combinator.
Before Shear started Twitch, he was the co-founder of Kiko Calendar, a calendar app he worked on through the 2005 Y Combinator program.
In his post on X Monday, Shear explained why he had taken the OpenAI job.
“I had recently resigned from my role as CEO of Twitch due to the birth of my now 9 month old son,” Shear said in the post early Monday.
“Spending time with him has been every bit as rewarding as I thought it would be, and I was happily avoiding full time employment.”
“I took this job because I believe that OpenAI is one of the most important companies currently in existence. When the board shared the situation and asked me to take the role, I did not make the decision lightly. Ultimately I felt that I had a duty to help if I could,” he added.
Why it matters
The swift elevation of Shear to OpenAI’s CEO puts him in charge of one of the most important companies in the AI world today.
OpenAI is known for its popular generative AI chatbot, ChatGPT.
The powerful technology behind that chatbot is called a large language model, or LLM. This is an AI model capable of processing and generating human language, based on training from vast amounts of data.
As head of OpenAI, Shear will likely face pressure from regulators who have been heavily scrutinizing AI model companies given the risks the technology poses around misinformation and potential displacement of jobs.
Earlier this month, the U.K. held a pivotal summit on AI safety, attended by major foundational AI companies, to discuss some of the most pressing issues in the field.
Particularly high on the list of discussion areas for world leaders was the “existential risk” that AI poses to humans.
Altman has himself warned of the threat of AI to eradicate humanity, despite being at the helm of a company that was working on rapidly advancing the technology.
Clarification: The headline of this story has been amended to reflect the fact that Shear has been named interim CEO of OpenAI.
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Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.
As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.
“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”
The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup.
Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.
“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.
Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.
This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.
Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.
The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.
The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.
Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.
Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.
The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.
Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.
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The company has also achieved its own notable milestones this year, as it prospers off the AI boom.
On Wednesday, the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker became the first company to top a $4 trillion market capitalization, beating out both Microsoft and Apple. The chipmaker closed above that milestone Thursday as CNBC reported that the technology titan met with President Donald Trump.
Brooke Seawell, venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, sold about $24 million worth of Nvidia shares, according to an SEC filing. Seawell has been on the company’s board since 1997, according to the company.
Huang still holds more than 858 million shares of Nvidia, both directly and indirectly, in different partnerships and trusts.
Elon Musk meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Blair House in Washington DC, USA on February 13, 2025.
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Tesla will open a showroom in Mumbai, India next week, marking the U.S. electric carmakers first official foray into the country.
The one and a half hour launch event for the Tesla “Experience Center” will take place on July 15 at the Maker Maxity Mall in Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai, according to an event invitation seen by CNBC.
Along with the showroom display, which will feature the company’s cars, Tesla is also likely to officially launch direct sales to Indian customers.
The automaker has had its eye on India for a while and now appears to have stepped up efforts to launch locally.
In April, Tesla boss Elon Musk spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss collaboration in areas including technology and innovation. That same month, the EV-maker’s finance chief said the company has been “very careful” in trying to figure out when to enter the market.
Tesla has no manufacturing operations in India, even though the country’s government is likely keen for the company to establish a factory. Instead the cars sold in India will need to be imported from Tesla’s other manufacturing locations in places like Shanghai, China, and Berlin, Germany.
As Tesla begins sales in India, it will come up against challenges from long-time Chinese rival BYD, as well as local player Tata Motors.
One potential challenge for Tesla comes by way of India’s import duties on electric vehicles, which stand at around 70%. India has tried to entice investment in the country by offering companies a reduced duty of 15% if they commit to invest $500 million and set up manufacturing locally.
HD Kumaraswamy, India’s minister for heavy industries, told reporters in June that Tesla is “not interested” in manufacturing in the country, according to a Reuters report.
Tesla is looking to recruit roles in Mumbai, job listings posted on LinkedIn . These include advisors working in showrooms, security, vehicle operators to collect data for its Autopilot feature and service technicians.
There are also roles being advertised in the Indian capital of New Delhi, including for store managers. It’s unclear if Tesla is planning to launch a showroom in the city.