OpenAI brings Sam Altman back as CEO less than a week after he was fired by board
Sam Altman will return as CEO of OpenAI, the startup tweeted early Wednesday morning. The move follows immense pressure from employees and investors on the board that ousted him less than a week ago.
Former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers will join OpenAI’s board, the Microsoft-backed startup said, with Taylor holding the chair position. Adam D’Angelo, co-founder and CEO of question-and-answer startup Quora, will remain on the board.
Concurrent with Altman’s return, Helen Toner, Tasha McCauley and co-founder Ilya Sutskever were removed as board members. All had been involved in pushing out Altman, although Sutskever later walked back his support for the coup and remains an OpenAI employee as of Wednesday.
“We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this,” OpenAI said in the message on X, formerly known as Twitter, posted Wednesday at 1 a.m. ET.
On Monday, hundreds of employees, including Sutskever, signed a letter saying that if the board didn’t resign and bring Altman back, the overwhelming majority of employees would move to work with him at Microsoft.
Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, said in an X post Monday that Altman and his co-founder Greg Brockman would join Microsoft to form a new AI lab. Preparations for that lab were already underway when the announcement from OpenAI came early Wednesday.
That followed an announcement late Sunday that OpenAI had hired ex-Twitch CEO Emmett Shear as Altman’s interim replacement. Originally, the board had said OpenAI technology chief Mira Murati would assume that role, but she soon joined the parade of employees calling for Altman’s return.
“[W]ith the new board and w satya’s support, i’m looking forward to returning to openai, and building on our strong partnership with msft,” Altman wrote in a post of his own on X.
Nadella applauded changes OpenAI made to its board in an X post.
“We believe this is a first essential step on a path to more stable, well-informed, and effective governance,” Nadella wrote. “Sam, Greg, and I have talked and agreed they have a key role to play along with the OAI leadership team in ensuring OAI continues to thrive and build on its mission. We look forward to building on our strong partnership and delivering the value of this next generation of AI to our customers and partners.”
The rapid reinstatement of Altman began to look like a possibility on Saturday as news surfaced that a group of prominent investors, including Microsoft, Tiger Global, Thrive Capital and Sequoia Capital were working to reverse the board’s decision from a day earlier. None of those firms had board seats, and they were caught unaware by the decision.
“OpenAI has the potential to be one of the most consequential companies in the history of computing. Sam and Greg possess a profound commitment to the company’s integrity, and an unmatched ability to inspire and lead. We are excited for them to rejoin the company they founded and helped build into what it is today,” Thrive said in a statement Wednesday.
In a post on X late Saturday night, Altman wrote, “i love the openai team so much.” Brockman, who quit the company after the board removed him as chairman alongside the ouster of Altman, reposted the comment with a heart symbol. Other OpenAI employees did the same.
OpenAI, which was reportedly in talks as recently as last month to sell employee shares to investors at an $86 billion valuation, emerged as the hottest startup on the planet after releasing its ChatGPT chatbot in late 2022. ChatGPT allows users to input simple text queries and retrieve smart and creative answers that can lead to more in-depth conversations.
Altman had been leading the company since 2019 and was serving as both the top executive of a high-flying company and the public face of artificial intelligence research and product development.
Unlike most Silicon Valley startups, OpenAI wasn’t structured like a typical corporation with large chunks of equity controlled by the founders. Rather, it was part of a nonprofit that was started in 2015. The board oversees the nonprofit, which “acts as the overall governing body for all OpenAI activities,” according to Friday’s blog post.
Sutskever and Brockman were both part of OpenAI’s founding team. Original investors included Altman, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who reportedly committed $1 billion to the project.
“Returning to OpenAI & getting back to coding tonight,” Brockman wrote in an early Wednesday X post.
Immediately after OpenAI’s board announced Altman’s firing, prominent Silicon Valley investors and founders loudly voiced their concerns and even compared the move to Apple’s decision 38 years ago to fire Steve Jobs. In 1997, Jobs would return and eventually lead Apple to create the iPhone and become the most valuable company in the U.S.
“What happened at OpenAI today is a Board coup that we have not seen the likes of since 1985 when the then-Apple board pushed out Steve Jobs,” longtime startup investor Ron Conway said in an X post. “It is shocking; it is irresponsible; and it does not do right by Sam & Greg or all the builders in OpenAI.”
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt called Altman a “hero of mine” who built a company that “changed our collective world forever.” Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky described Altman as “one of the best founders of his generation.” And venture capitalist Vinod Khosla said he is a “once in a generation CEO.”
Nadella, who made an unexpected appearance earlier this month at OpenAI’s developer conference, was reportedly surprised and upset by the announcement. His company has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI and is a close technology partner, hosting hefty GPT workloads on its Azure cloud infrastructure.
“This was the pathway that maximized safety alongside doing right by all stakeholders involved,” Shear said in an early Wednesday X post. “I’m glad to have been a part of the solution.”
WATCH: Madrona’s Matt McIlwain talks Sam Altman’s departure as OpenAI CEO
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Close-up of a hand holding a cellphone displaying the Amazon Pharmacy system, Lafayette, California, September 15, 2021.
Smith Collection | Gado | Getty Images
Amazon is expanding its online pharmacy to fill prescription pet medications, the company announced Thursday.
The company said it has added “hundreds of commonly prescribed pet medications” to its U.S. site, ranging from flea and tick solutions to treatments for chronic conditions.
Prescriptions are purchased via Amazon’s storefront and must be approved by a veterinarian. Online pet pharmacy Vetsource will oversee the dispensing and delivery of medications, said Amazon, adding that items are typically delivered within two to six days.
Amazon launched its digital drugstore in 2020 with the added perk of discounts and free delivery for Prime members. The company has been working to speed up prescription shipments over the past year, bringing same-day delivery to a handful of U.S. cities. Last October, Amazon set a goal to make speedy medicine delivery available in nearly half of the U.S. in 2025.
The new pet medication offerings puts Amazon into more direct competition with online pet pharmacy Chewy, as well as Walmart, which offers pet prescription delivery.
Amazon Pharmacy is part of the company’s growing stable of healthcare offerings, which also includes One Medical, the primary care provider it acquired for roughly $3.9 billion in July 2022. Amazon’s online pharmacy was born out of the company’s 2018 acquisition of online pharmacy PillPack.
Whoop member wears the new device.
Courtesy of Whoop
Whoop on Thursday announced two new wearable devices, Whoop 5.0 and Whoop MG, which feature sleeker hardware, a longer battery life and additional in-app health insights.
Both of the company’s new devices are designed for 24/7 wear.
The Whoop 5.0 and Whoop MG support 14 days of battery life, which is around triple the four-to-five-day range offered by Whoop 4.0. The new hardware is also 7% smaller than the previous device, with a processor that’s 60% faster, the company said.
“We’ve taken everything we’ve learned over the past decade and built a platform to help our members perform and live at their peak for longer,” Whoop founder and CEO Will Ahmed said in a release.
The launch marks Whoop’s first major hardware update since 2021, when the company released Whoop 4.0. Whoop said its new devices will help users understand how their daily decisions impact their performance and health outcomes over time, according to a release.
Cost and tiers
There are three annual membership tiers: Whoop One, which costs $199 and includes the Whoop 5.0; Whoop Peak, which costs $239 and includes the Whoop 5.0; and Whoop Life, which costs $359 and includes the Whoop MG. Accessories like additional bands will come at an extra cost.
Whoop 5.0 and Whoop MG memberships and accessories are available for purchase online starting on Thursday.
Whoop’s new membership options.
Whoop
Whoop One members will be able to use their Whoop 5.0 to measure sleep, strain and recovery, as well as the cardiovascular and muscular impact of various workouts. Users can also track their menstrual cycles and pregnancies.
Whoop Peak builds on those core metrics. Members have access to a Health Monitor feature, which provides a quick look at vitals like respiratory rate, heart rate, blood oxygen, and skin temperature. Whoop Peak also supports a real-time stress monitor, where users can see their stress level and complete guided breathing sessions if they’d like to increase relaxation or alertness.
The company also unveiled a feature called Healthspan, which uses nine metrics to calculate adult users’ Whoop Age and Pace of Aging. A user’s Whoop Age compares their physiological age to their actual age, and Pace of Aging assesses how fast or slow someone is aging based on their behavior.
The Healthspan feature is updated every week, and users will get tips about how they can improve their Whoop Age and Pace of Aging in their app. Whoop developed this feature in partnership with the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, the company said.
The most comprehensive membership is Whoop Life, which will give users access to additional medical-grade health features with Whoop MG.
Whoop Life members can record an electrocardiogram, or an ECG, to detect irregular heart rhythms like AFib, high heart rate or low heart rate. Once the reading is complete, they can share a PDF of the recording with their doctor.
The ECG feature has been cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It’s not intended for users under 22 years old, or for users with a cardiac pacemaker or other implanted devices. It will be available in the U.S., the UAE and Qatar at launch, with additional countries coming soon.
Whoop Life members can also get daily insights about their blood pressure, including estimated systolic and diastolic ranges. Users will have to log a traditional cuff-reading to act as a baseline to unlock this feature, and it’s not intended for treatment, diagnosis or medical use.
Whoop said Blood Pressure Insights has been in development for several years, and the feature is currently in beta.
Quick takeaways
Ashley Capoot wearing Whoop MG
Ashley Capoot
I got a sneak peek at the Whoop MG, and I’ve been wearing it for the past few days. I can’t speak to what it’s like to wear the device over an extended period, but my initial experience has been largely positive.
From a hardware standpoint, the Whoop MG looks and feels sleeker than the Whoop 4.0, which I tested out in April. The actual sensor is roughly an inch wide, and the band is slightly thinner than that. I’ve found that both the Whoop MG and the Whoop 4.0 are a little hard to take off — you really have to tug on the latch.
The Whoop MG’s setup is very straightforward, and I was up and running on the app in a matter of minutes. With all the new features, there’s a lot of additional data to make sense of, so the app seemed pretty busy to me at first. I felt like I had a better handle on it after a few hours, though, and I haven’t felt pressure to constantly monitor it.
Of the new features, I thought Healthspan was particularly interesting. As a relatively healthy 24-year-old, I noticed I still felt relieved to be “younger” than my age. I’d be curious to see how that feature would change based on my behaviors from week to week.
I also liked the Whoop MG’s detailed sleep tracking and the real-time stress monitor, as stress is something I’ve personally been trying to be more mindful of. I’ve learned that my stress levels really skyrocket while I’m taking public transport, for instance, and adjust accordingly.
After about a dozen tries, I wasn’t able to log a successful ECG reading. I kept getting errors, even after switching wrists and the positioning of my arms. That’s been disappointing, as I’m interested to see my results. The Blood Pressure Insights are neat, and assuming other users can successfully record ECG readings, it’s easy to see the potential benefit. That said, I don’t think I need those features in my daily life yet, so the Whoop Life membership probably wouldn’t be the right pick for me.
I’m not totally sold on the Whoop MG’s aesthetics. I have small hands and wrists, so I always feel like smart devices tend to look clunky on me.
I definitely felt like the Whoop 4.0 was too big for me, but the Whoop MG doesn’t bother me quite as much. That’s just my personal taste, and there are lots of Whoop accessories you can buy to spiff up the device for different occasions.
After just a few days, there’s a lot I can still learn from the Whoop MG, but I feel like I’d personally reach for the Whoop 5.0. The range of membership options helps ensure that users don’t have to break the bank, so I’d feel comfortable recommending Whoop 5.0 and Whoop MG to my friends and family. And for existing Whoop customers who are thinking about an upgrade, the extended battery life alone is worth considering.
WATCH: CEO of fitness tracker company Whoop on $3.6 billion valuation, outlook
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