OpenAI has disbanded its team focused on the long-term risks of artificial intelligence just one year after the company announced the group, a source familiar with the situation confirmed to CNBC on Friday.
The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that some of the team members are being re-assigned to multiple other teams within the company.
The news comes days after both team leaders, OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike, announced their departures from the Microsoft-backed startup. Leike on Friday wrote that OpenAI’s “safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products.”
OpenAI’s Superalignment team, announced last year, has focused on “scientific and technical breakthroughs to steer and control AI systems much smarter than us.” At the time, OpenAI said it would commit 20% of its computing power to the initiative over four years.
Sutskever and Leike on Tuesday announced their departures on X, hours apart, but on Friday, Leike shared more details about why he left the startup.
“I joined because I thought OpenAI would be the best place in the world to do this research,” Leike wrote on X. “However, I have been disagreeing with OpenAI leadership about the company’s core priorities for quite some time, until we finally reached a breaking point.”
Leike wrote that he believes much more of the company’s bandwidth should be focused on security, monitoring, preparedness, safety and societal impact.
“These problems are quite hard to get right, and I am concerned we aren’t on a trajectory to get there,” he wrote. “Over the past few months my team has been sailing against the wind. Sometimes we were struggling for compute and it was getting harder and harder to get this crucial research done.”
Leike added that OpenAI must become a “safety-first AGI company.”
“Building smarter-than-human machines is an inherently dangerous endeavor,” he wrote. “OpenAI is shouldering an enormous responsibility on behalf of all of humanity. But over the past years, safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products.”
Leike did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and OpenAI did not immediately provide a comment.
The high-profile departures come months after OpenAI went through a leadership crisis involving co-founder and CEO Sam Altman.
In November, OpenAI’s board ousted Altman, claiming in a statement that Altman had not been “consistently candid in his communications with the board.”
The issue seemed to grow more complex each following day, with The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets reporting that Sutskever trained his focus on ensuring that artificial intelligence would not harm humans, while others, including Altman, were instead more eager to push ahead with delivering new technology.
Altman’s ouster prompted resignations – or threats of resignations – including an open letter signed by virtually all of OpenAI’s employees, and uproar from investors, including Microsoft. Within a week, Altman was back at the company, and board members Helen Toner, Tasha McCauley and Ilya Sutskever, who had voted to oust Altman, were out. Sutskever stayed on staff at the time but no longer in his capacity as a board member. Adam D’Angelo, who had also voted to oust Altman, remained on the board.
When Altman was asked about Sutskever’s status on a Zoom call with reporters in March, he said there were no updates to share. “I love Ilya… I hope we work together for the rest of our careers, my career, whatever,” Altman said. “Nothing to announce today.”
On Tuesday, Altman shared his thoughts on Sutskever’s departure.
“This is very sad to me; Ilya is easily one of the greatest minds of our generation, a guiding light of our field, and a dear friend,” Altman wrote on X. “His brilliance and vision are well known; his warmth and compassion are less well known but no less important.” Altman said research director Jakub Pachocki, who has been at OpenAI since 2017, will replace Sutskever as chief scientist.
News of Sutskever’s and Leike’s departures, and the dissolution of the superalignment team, come days after OpenAI launched a new AI model and desktop version of ChatGPT, along with an updated user interface, the company’s latest effort to expand the use of its popular chatbot.
The update brings the GPT-4 model to everyone, including OpenAI’s free users, technology chief Mira Murati said Monday in a livestreamed event. She added that the new model, GPT-4o, is “much faster,” with improved capabilities in text, video and audio.
OpenAI said it eventually plans to allow users to video chat with ChatGPT. “This is the first time that we are really making a huge step forward when it comes to the ease of use,” Murati said.
Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach walks to a morning session at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, on July 14, 2023.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images
Workday shares slipped as much as 11% in extended trading Tuesday after the human resources and finance software maker issued a quarterly forecast that came in below Wall Street projections.
For the fiscal fourth quarter, Workday called for an adjusted operating margin of 25% on $2.03 billion in subscription revenue. Analysts polled by StreetAccount were looking for a 25.5% margin and $2.04 billion in subscription revenue.
Here’s how the company performed during the fiscal third quarter compared with the consensus among analysts surveyed by LSEG:
Earnings per share: $1.89 adjusted vs. $1.76 expected
Revenue: $2.16 billion vs. $2.13 billion expected
Workday’s total revenue grew about 16% year over year in the quarter ended Oct. 31, according to a statement. Subscription revenue totaled $1.96 billion, up around 16%, consistent with the $1.96 billion consensus among analysts surveyed by StreetAccount.
The company reported net income of $193 million or 72 cents per share, up $114 million or 43 cents per share in the same quarter a year ago. The adjusted operating margin for the quarter was 26.3%. StreetAccount had expected 25.4%.
In some parts of the world, Workday is still facing more deal scrutiny than usual, Workday’s finance chief, Zane Rowe, said on a conference call with analysts.
Now the company is looking to grow its business in the U.S. government, CEO Carl Eschenbach said. “We think there’s a huge opportunity there with probably more than 80% of HCM and ERP still on premises,” he said, referring to human capital management and enterprise resource planning.
Earlier this month, President-elect Donald Trump announced plans for an advisory panel called the “Department of Government Efficiency.”
“People are absolutely looking to drive more economies of scale and more efficiency,” Eschenbach said.
Workday said Rob Enslin, the former Google and SAP executive who stepped down as UiPath CEO in June, was joining as president and chief commercial officer. In October, Workday told employees that Doug Robinson, a co-president, will retire.
During the quarter, Workday acquired contract lifecycle management software startup Evisort. Workday also said artificial intelligence agents for spotting inefficiencies, filing expense reports and updating succession plans would become available in early access in 2025.
“We think they’re going to have a nice impact on bookings and revenue as we go into the new year,” Eschenbach said.
Rowe called for $8.8 billion in fiscal year 2026 subscription revenue, good for 14% growth.
As of Tuesday’s close, Workday shares were down 2% in 2024, while the S&P 500 index had gained 26%.
Dell Technologies forecast fourth-quarter revenue and earnings below Wall Street expectations Tuesday, despite bullish commentary from the company on AI sales growth. The PC maker reported quarterly earnings Tuesday that beat analyst expectations for earnings per share but came up light on overall revenue.
Shares fell 10% in after-hours trading.
Here’s how Dell did for the fiscal third quarter versus LSEG consensus estimates for the quarter ending Nov. 1:
Earnings per share: $2.15 adjusted versus $2.06 expected
Revenue: $24.4 billion versus $24.67 billion expected
Net income climbed 12% to $1.12 billion, or $1.58 per share, from about $1 billion, or $1.36 per share, in the year-ago period. Overall revenue increased about 10% from $22.25 billion a year ago.
Dell said it expected between $24 billion and $25 billion in revenue during the fourth quarter, less than LSEG expectations of $25.57 billion. It said it expected $2.50 in adjusted earnings per share, versus expectations of $2.65 per share.
Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clark told investors on the earnings call that growth from AI will change from quarter to quarter.
“This business will not be linear, especially as customers navigate an underlying silicon roadmap that is changing,” Clark said.
The company’s shares have risen 86% so far in 2024 as investors realize it’s one of the most important companies selling tools and systems for artificial intelligence developers.
Dell is a top vendor for computer clusters required to develop and deploy artificial intelligence, especially computers based around Nvidia chips. It competes against other server makers such as Super Micro Computer and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, as well as manufacturers in Asia.
Demand for Nvidia’s AI accelerators remains high from cloud providers, enterprises, and government institutions, who often buy systems installed with tens of thousands of AI chips. Dell sells the completed systems.
This year, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang gave Dell and its founder, Michael Dell, a shout-out as the company to contact to place orders for its new Blackwell AI chips.
Dell executives said some of the demand from its customers was shifting to later quarters, waiting for Nvidia’s next-generation Blackwell chips, which are in production now but have yet to ship to end-users in large quantities.
“We saw in Q3 a pretty rapid shift of the orders moving towards our Blackwell design,” Clark said.
Dell said much of its AI system growth was already reflected in a $4.5 billion pipeline of future orders.
“We’re only in the very early innings of enterprises learning how to deploy AI,” Clark said.
Dell’s AI server sales are reported in the company’s Infrastructure Solutions Group, which includes AI servers, storage, networking components, and traditional servers. The group’s revenue rose 34%, mostly driven by AI sales, to $11.4 billion.
The strongest part of Dell’s ISG business was its servers and networking subsidiary, which includes AI systems. Revenue rose 58% to $7.4 billion. Dell shipped $2.9 billion in AI servers during the quarter, and the company said during the quarter that customers had booked $3.6 billion of future AI server orders.
The company said increased AI server orders boosted demand by “double digits” for its traditional servers, which are less power-hungry and based around CPU chips from Intel or AMD, and can free up room or power inside data centers for companies investing heavily in AI infrastructure.
The company’s computer storage systems grew less strongly than servers, rising 4% to $4 billion. The overall ISG unit is more profitable, thanks to sales of pricier AI systems.
Dell’s Client Solutions Group, which sells PCs and laptops to consumers and enterprises, declined 1% on an annual basis to $12.1 billion.
While commercial clients buying PCs for their workforces rose 3% on an annual basis to $10.1 billion, the company’s sales from PCs to consumers fell 18% on an annual basis to $2 billion.
Furniture waste is a growing concern as consumers and companies seek to reduce carbon emissions. In the U.S. alone, we throw out roughly 12 million tons of furniture every year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, leaving it to rot in landfills. Most of it is less than fifteen years old. Recycling furniture can be difficult, mostly because selling and moving it is such a pain.
Apparel companies like Poshmark, Dpop and Thredup are thriving in online thrifting, but furniture thrifting is a lot more complicated, simply due to the size of the items. Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace list furniture, but it’s up to the consumers to figure out how to pick up and deliver the items. That can be costly and potentially dangerous, with strangers inviting strangers into their homes.
AptDeco is offering a new business model. The New York-based startup is an online marketplace for buying and selling used furniture that provides pick-up and delivery for items. It also works with major retailers, like West Elm and Pottery Barn, to sell floor models or resell items that have been returned.
“By extending the lifecycle of furniture, overall it’s just better for the environment, whether it be less wood being chopped out of forests to just the supply chain associated with producing that furniture,” said Reham Fagiri, founder and CEO of AptDeco.
For big furniture retailers, there is big waste in returns and the reverse logistics involved — from the costs to the transportation emissions. Instead, partner brands are now selling their returned items on AptDeco as soon as a customer requests a return, directly from the customer’s home. AptDeco uses its own resale data to price items to sell quickly, often within a week. They can then retrieve the item from the returner’s home and deliver it directly to a resale buyer, bypassing the need to take these returned items to a distribution center first.
Kathleen O’Brien bought her dining room table, TV console and headboard from AptDeco.
“The world is kind of on fire, literally, and so anything that I can do to reduce my own footprint in the world is what I’m trying to do, like in all aspects of my life and furniture specifically,” said O’Brien.
While the furniture sells at as much as a 50% discount to new, the service comes at a price.
“We earn a percentage that ranges from 15% to as high as 60% depending on the product, the brand, the condition, and a lot of different variations that go into it,” said Fagiri.
The company operates everywhere in the U.S. except Alaska and Hawaii. The company’s carrier network across so many markets makes its expansion potential very attractive to investors like Initialized Capital.
“Contributing to the circular economy through their logistics business is a great example of the types of climate adaptation companies that we see as having longevity in the next phase of climate tech,” said Zoe Perret, a partner at Initialized Capital,
AptDeco is also backed by Comcast Ventures, Y Combinator, Hearst Lab, Great Oaks Venture Capital and Soma Capital. It has raised $14.5 million in total funding so far.
In the 10 years since its launch, Fagiri says the company has offset over 19 million pounds of carbon dioxide from the environment. That’s equivalent to roughly 6.5 million cars taken off the road.
CNBC producer Lisa Rizzolo contributed to this piece.