Microsoft exec says OpenAI employees can join with same compensation

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2 years ago

November 21, 2023

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Greg Brockman, OpenAI president and co-founder, and Kevin Scott, Microsoft chief technology officer, speak onstage at Microsoft’s Build conference in Seattle on May 23, 2023.

Dan DeLong | Microsoft

Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott on Tuesday offered to match compensation for the hundreds of employees at OpenAI who are threatening to resign following Sam Altman’s sudden ouster as CEO.

“To my partners at OpenAI: We have seen your petition and appreciate your desire potentially to join Sam Altman at Microsoft’s new AI Research Lab,” Scott said Tuesday in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Know that if needed, you have a role at Microsoft that matches your compensation and advances our collective mission.”

It is not immediately known if the offer is contingent on Altman’s employment at Microsoft. Scott did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment on X. But, the comment gives some clarity to what Microsoft is willing to pay employees and how many it would hire.

The future of OpenAI is still uncertain and it remains unclear where Altman will work.

Early Monday morning, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that Altman, Greg Brockman, who resigned as OpenAI’s president, and their colleagues would join Microsoft as part of a new AI research group. More than 600 OpenAI employees then signed a letter to the company’s board and threatened to join their former boss at Microsoft unless the members resigned.

In his first press interview since Altman’s ouster, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told CNBC on Monday, “At this point, I think it’s very clear that something has to change around the governance” at OpenAI. Nadella did not say for certain during the interview that Altman and Brockman were joining Microsoft, showing the situation had changed from statements made earlier in the day.

“We chose to explicitly partner with OpenAI, and we want to continue to do so,” Nadella told CNBC. “Obviously that depends on the people of OpenAI staying there or coming to Microsoft. So I’m open to both options, but one thing I will not do is stop innovating.”

OpenAI’s board fired Altman Friday after determining he was “not consistently candid in his communications” with them, according to a statement. After a long weekend of negotiations that looked to possibly reinstate Altman at the company, ex-Twitch CEO Emmett Shear announced he had been appointed interim head.

OpenAI’s board is now made up of just four people: OpenAI’s chief scientist Ilya Sutskever — who signed the letter threatening to leave — Adam D’Angelo, Tasha McCauley and Helen Toner. They have not elaborated on the reasoning behind Altman’s ouster. Sutskever expressed deep “regret” for his participation in the board’s decision in a post on X Monday.

–CNBC’s Jordan Novet contributed to this report.

Technology

Here are 4 major moments that drove the stock market last week

Published

17 hours ago

December 13, 2025

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Here are 4 major moments that drove the stock market last week

Technology

Oracle says there have been ‘no delays’ in OpenAI arrangement after stock slide

Published

2 days ago

December 12, 2025

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Oracle says there have been 'no delays' in OpenAI arrangement after stock slide

Oracle CEO Clay Magouyrk appears on a media tour of the Stargate AI data center in Abilene, Texas, on Sept. 23, 2025.

Kyle Grillot | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Oracle on Friday pushed back against a report that said the company will complete data centers for OpenAI, one of its major customers, in 2028, rather than 2027.

The delay is due to a shortage of labor and materials, according to the Friday report from Bloomberg, which cited unnamed people. Oracle shares fell to a session low of $185.98, down 6.5% from Thursday’s close.

“Site selection and delivery timelines were established in close coordination with OpenAI following execution of the agreement and were jointly agreed,” an Oracle spokesperson said in an email to CNBC. “There have been no delays to any sites required to meet our contractual commitments, and all milestones remain on track.”

The Oracle spokesperson did not specify a timeline for turning on cloud computing infrastructure for OpenAI. In September, OpenAI said it had a partnership with Oracle worth more than $300 billion over the next five years.

“We have a good relationship with OpenAI,” Clay Magouyrk, one of Oracle’s two newly appointed CEOs, said at an October analyst meeting.

Doing business with OpenAI is relatively new to 48-year-old Oracle. Historically, Oracle grew through sales of its database software and business applications. Its cloud infrastructure business now contributes over one-fourth of revenue, although Oracle remains a smaller hyperscaler than Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

OpenAI has also made commitments to other companies as it looks to meet expected capacity needs.

In September, Nvidia said it had signed a letter of intent with OpenAI to deploy at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia equipment for the San Francisco artificial intelligence startup. The first phase of that project is expected in the second half of 2026.

Nvidia and OpenAI said in a September statement that they “look forward to finalizing the details of this new phase of strategic partnership in the coming weeks.”

But no announcement has come yet.

In a November filing, Nvidia said “there is no assurance that we will enter into definitive agreements with respect to the OpenAI opportunity.”

OpenAI has historically relied on Nvidia graphics processing units to operate ChatGPT and other products, and now it’s also looking at designing custom chips in a collaboration with Broadcom.

On Thursday, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan laid out a timeline for the OpenAI work, which was announced in October. Broadcom and OpenAI said they had signed a term sheet.

“It’s more like 2027, 2028, 2029, 10 gigawatts, that was the OpenAI discussion,” Tan said on Broadcom’s earnings call. “And that’s, I call it, an agreement, an alignment of where we’re headed with respect to a very respected and valued customer, OpenAI. But we do not expect much in 2026.”

OpenAI declined to comment.

WATCH: Oracle says there have been ‘no delays’ in OpenAI arrangement after stock slide

Technology

AI order from Trump might be ‘illegal,’ Democrats and consumer advocacy groups claim

Published

2 days ago

December 12, 2025

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AI order from Trump might be ‘illegal,’ Democrats and consumer advocacy groups claim

“This is the wrong approach — and most likely illegal,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said in a post on X Thursday.

“We need a strong federal safety standard, but we should not remove the few protections Americans currently have from the downsides of AI,” Klobuchar said.

Trump’s executive order directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to create a task force to challenge state laws regulating AI.

The Commerce Department was also directed to identify “onerous” state regulations aimed at AI.

The order is a win for tech companies such as OpenAI and Google and the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, which have all lobbied against state regulations they view as burdensome.

It follows a push by some Republicans in Congress to impose a moratorium on state AI laws. A recent plan to tack on that moratorium to the National Defense Authorization Act was scuttled.

Collin McCune, head of government affairs at Andreessen Horowitz, celebrated Trump’s order, calling it “an important first step” to boost American competition and innovation. But McCune urged Congress to codify a national AI framework.

“States have an important role in addressing harms and protecting people, but they can’t provide the long-term clarity or national direction that only Congress can deliver,” McCune said in a statement.

Sriram Krishnan, a White House AI advisor and former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, during an interview Friday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” said that Trump is was looking to partner with Congress to pass such legislation.

“The White House is now taking a firm stance where we want to push back on ‘doomer’ laws that exist in a bunch of states around the country,” Krishnan said.

He also said that the goal of the executive order is to give the White House tools to go after state laws that it believes make America less competitive, such as recently passed legislation in Democratic-led states like California and Colorado.

The White House will not use the executive order to target state laws that protect the safety of children, Krishnan said.

Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, called Trump’s order “mostly bluster” and said the president “cannot unilaterally preempt state law.”

“We expect the EO to be challenged in court and defeated,” Weissman said in a statement. “In the meantime, states should continue their efforts to protect their residents from the mounting dangers of unregulated AI.”

Weissman said about the order, “This reward to Big Tech is a disgraceful invitation to reckless behavior
by the world’s largest corporations and a complete override of the federalist principles that Trump and MAGA claim to venerate.”

In the short term, the order could affect a handful of states that have already passed legislation targeting AI. The order says that states whose laws are considered onerous could lose federal funding.

One Colorado law, set to take effect in June, will require AI developers to protect consumers from reasonably foreseeable risks of algorithmic discrimination.

Some say Trump’s order will have no real impact on that law or other state regulations.

“I’m pretty much ignoring it, because an executive order cannot tell a state what to do,” said Colorado state Rep. Brianna Titone, a Democrat who co-sponsored the anti-discrimination law.

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed a law that, starting in January, will require major AI companies to publicly disclose their safety protocols.

That law’s author, state Sen. Scott Wiener, said that Trump’s stated goal of having the United States dominate the AI sector is undercut by his recent moves.

“Of course, he just authorized chip sales to China & Saudi Arabia: the exact opposite of ensuring U.S. dominance,” Wiener wrote in an X post on Thursday night. The Bay Area Democrat is seeking to succeed Speaker-emerita Nancy Pelosi in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Trump on Monday said he will Nvidia to sell its advanced H200 chips to “approved customers” in China, provided that U.S. gets a 25% cut of revenues.