OpenAI disbands another safety team, head advisor for ‘AGI Readiness’ resigns

Published

11 months ago

October 24, 2024

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OpenAI is disbanding its “AGI Readiness” team, which advised the company on OpenAI’s own capacity to handle increasingly powerful AI and the world’s readiness to manage that technology, according to the head of the team.

On Wednesday, Miles Brundage, senior advisor for AGI Readiness, announced his departure from the company via a Substack post. He wrote that his primary reasons were that the opportunity cost had become too high and he thought his research would be more impactful externally, that he wanted to be less biased and that he had accomplished what he set out to at OpenAI.

Brundage also wrote that, as far as how OpenAI and the world is doing on AGI readiness, “Neither OpenAI nor any other frontier lab is ready, and the world is also not ready.” Brundage plans to start his own nonprofit, or join an existing one, to focus on AI policy research and advocacy. He added that “AI is unlikely to be as safe and beneficial as possible without a concerted effort to make it so.”

Former AGI Readiness team members will be reassigned to other teams, according to the post.

“We fully support Miles’ decision to pursue his policy research outside industry and are deeply grateful for his contributions,” an OpenAI spokesperson told CNBC. “His plan to go all-in on independent research on AI policy gives him the opportunity to have an impact on a wider scale, and we are excited to learn from his work and follow its impact. We’re confident that in his new role, Miles will continue to raise the bar for the quality of policymaking in industry and government.”

In May, OpenAI decided to disband its Superalignment team, which focused on the long-term risks of AI, just one year after it announced the group, a person familiar with the situation confirmed to CNBC at the time.

News of the AGI Readiness team’s disbandment follows the OpenAI board’s potential plans to restructure the firm to a for-profit business, and after three executives — CTO Mira Murati, research chief Bob McGrew and research VP Barret Zoph — announced their departure on the same day last month.

Earlier in October, OpenAI closed its buzzy funding round at a valuation of $157 billion, including the $6.6 billion the company raised from an extensive roster of investment firms and big tech companies. It also received a $4 billion revolving line of credit, bringing its total liquidity to more than $10 billion. The company expects about $5 billion in losses on $3.7 billion in revenue this year, CNBC confirmed with a source familiar last month.

And in September, OpenAI announced that its Safety and Security Committee, which the company introduced in May as it dealt with controversy over security processes, would become an independent board oversight committee. It recently wrapped up its 90-day review evaluating OpenAI’s processes and safeguards and then made recommendations to the board, with the findings also released in a public blog post.

News of the executive departures and board changes also follows a summer of mounting safety concerns and controversies surrounding OpenAI, which along with Google, Microsoft, Meta and other companies is at the helm of a generative AI arms race — a market that is predicted to top $1 trillion in revenue within a decade — as companies in seemingly every industry rush to add AI-powered chatbots and agents to avoid being left behind by competitors.

In July, OpenAI reassigned Aleksander Madry, one of OpenAI’s top safety executives, to a job focused on AI reasoning instead, sources familiar with the situation confirmed to CNBC at the time.

Madry was OpenAI’s head of preparedness, a team that was “tasked with tracking, evaluating, forecasting, and helping protect against catastrophic risks related to frontier AI models,” according to a bio for Madry on a Princeton University AI initiative website. Madry will still work on core AI safety work in his new role, OpenAI told CNBC at the time.

The decision to reassign Madry came around the same time that Democratic senators sent a letter to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman concerning “questions about how OpenAI is addressing emerging safety concerns.”

The letter, which was viewed by CNBC, also stated, “We seek additional information from OpenAI about the steps that the company is taking to meet its public commitments on safety, how the company is internally evaluating its progress on those commitments, and on the company’s identification and mitigation of cybersecurity threats.”

Microsoft gave up its observer seat on OpenAI’s board in July, stating in a letter viewed by CNBC that it can now step aside because it’s satisfied with the construction of the startup’s board, which had been revamped since the uprising that led to the brief ouster of Altman and threatened Microsoft’s massive investment in the company.

But in June, a group of current and former OpenAI employees published an open letter describing concerns about the artificial intelligence industry’s rapid advancement despite a lack of oversight and an absence of whistleblower protections for those who wish to speak up.

“AI companies have strong financial incentives to avoid effective oversight, and we do not believe bespoke structures of corporate governance are sufficient to change this,” the employees wrote at the time.

Days after the letter was published, a source familiar to the mater confirmed to CNBC that the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice were set to open antitrust investigations into OpenAI, Microsoft and Nvidia, focusing on the companies’ conduct.

FTC Chair Lina Khan has described her agency’s action as a “market inquiry into the investments and partnerships being formed between AI developers and major cloud service providers.”

The current and former employees wrote in the June letter that AI companies have “substantial non-public information” about what their technology can do, the extent of the safety measures they’ve put in place and the risk levels that technology has for different types of harm.

“We also understand the serious risks posed by these technologies,” they wrote, adding the companies “currently have only weak obligations to share some of this information with governments, and none with civil society. We do not think they can all be relied upon to share it voluntarily.”

OpenAI’s Superalignment team, announced last year and disbanded in May, had 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.

The team was disbanded after its leaders, OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike, announced their departures from the startup in May. Leike wrote in a post on X that OpenAI’s “safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products.”

Altman said at the time on X he was sad to see Leike leave and that OpenAI had more work to do. Soon afterward, co-founder Greg Brockman posted a statement attributed to Brockman and the CEO on X, asserting the company has “raised awareness of the risks and opportunities of AGI so that the world can better prepare for it.”

“I joined because I thought OpenAI would be the best place in the world to do this research,” Leike wrote on X at the time. “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 at the time. “Over the past few months my team has been sailing against the wind. Sometimes we were struggling for [computing resources] 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 on X. “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.”

Technology

Trump’s H-1B visa changes could ‘kneecap startups,’ drive talent elsewhere, experts say

Published

2 hours ago

September 24, 2025

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Trump's H-1B visa changes could 'kneecap startups,' drive talent elsewhere, experts say

President Donald Trump takes a question from a reporter before signing executive orders in the Oval Office at the White House on September 19, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Andrew Harnik | Getty Images

It’s been a chaotic few days for the tech sector, and industry executives and experts are still assessing how U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest immigration crackdown could shape the future of their workforces.

The Trump administration sparked widespread panic Friday after announcing employers will pay a new $100,000 fee for H-1B visas, which are temporary work visas granted to highly skilled foreign professionals. These visas have underpinned the U.S. tech workforce for decades.

Some tech executives, including Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, have lauded the changes to the H-1B program, but experts told CNBC that the Trump administration’s changes could prevent some tech companies — namely startups — from securing top foreign talent. These experts said the changes also run the risk of driving top talent toward other countries.

“The short of it is, it would be a disaster for America, for American companies, American competitiveness, American innovation,” said Exequiel Hernandez, an associate professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Tech’s reliance on the H-1B program

The current annual cap for H-1B visas is at 65,000, along with 20,000 additional visas for foreign professionals with advanced degrees.

In fiscal 2025, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Apple and Google are among the top 10 companies that employ the most H-1B holders. Prominent tech executives like Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Tesla CEO Elon Musk were H-1B recipients earlier in their careers.

As tech companies scrambled to respond before Trump’s proclamation went into effect at 12:01 a.m. ET on Sunday, the White House quelled some concerns on Saturday by clarifying that the fee is not annual and would only apply to new visas, not renewals for current visa holders.

More changes could be on the horizon.

The Trump administration teased a proposed rule on Tuesday that said H-1B recipients should be selected through a weighted process instead of a random one. The weighted process would take place when the number of requests for visas exceeds the limit of available spots, and it would be based on wage levels, the proposal said.

The proposed rule will officially publish in the Federal Register on Wednesday, and it’s still subject to change after the administration reviews initial public feedback.

Hastings called the Trump administration’s $100,000 fee a “great solution,” in a post on X on Sunday.

“It will mean H1-B is used just for very high value jobs, which will mean no lottery needed, and more certainty for those jobs,” he wrote.

OpenAI’s Altman expressed support for the updates during an interview with CNBC’s Jon Fortt on Monday.

“We need to get the smartest people in the country, and streamlining that process and also sort of outlining financial incentives seems good to me,” Altman said.

‘It kneecaps startups’

Historically, H-1B visas have cost employers somewhere between $2,000 to $5,000 per application, depending on the size of the company, according to the Immigration Law Group.

The new $100,000 fee is a big jump for small, cash-strapped startups.

“You’re not going to find many startups who are going to be willing to pay $100,000 per H-1B, in addition to salary for that H-1B,” said Adam Kovacevich, CEO of Chamber of Progress, a left-leaning tech industry trade association.

Even big tech companies could feel some pain and have to reassess who they use H-1Bs for. But their deep pockets come with advantages.

“A big firm like Microsoft or Google, even though it’s not ideal for them, they have workarounds,” said Wharton’s Hernandez. “They can offshore jobs, or they’re the ones who can make acquisitions.”

Garry Tan, the CEO of the popular startup accelerator Y Combinator, criticized the Trump administration’s new fee, writing in a LinkedIn post that “it kneecaps startups” and is a “massive gift” to overseas tech hubs.

“In the middle of an AI arms race, we’re telling builders to build elsewhere,” Tan wrote. “We need American Little Tech to win—not $100K toll booths.”

A picture shows logos of the Big Tech companies named GAFAM, for Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft, on June 2, 2023.

Sebastien Bozon | AFP | Getty Images

China and other competitors loom large

U.S. tech companies big and small are fiercely competing with one another – and the rest of the world – as they race to develop the most advanced AI models and applications. Organizations like Meta have shelled out billions of dollars to recruit top AI talent in an effort to try and gain an edge.

The Trump administration’s changes to the H-1B program could complicate similar recruiting efforts.

“What this does is that it gives our competitors, other countries, places like Asia, Canada, Europe, they can then attract these employees to create new innovations,” said Steven Hubbard, a data scientist at the American Immigration Council, which is a nonprofit for immigration advocacy and research.

One big competitor in the war for talent is China. The world’s second-largest economy has long fought against the U.S. for tech dominance, and more recently the AI race.

Earlier this year, Chinese AI firm DeepSeek rattled global markets after claiming to create a large language chatbot that outperformed competitors at a fraction of the cost. The news raised questions over the significant sums that American tech companies are shelling out on AI.

Some experts worry that visa changes could deal a victory into China’s hands, sending top talent overseas. The move may also deter foreign students from attending university in the U.S. as uncertainty hangs over their post-graduation job prospects.

“Those students are going to look at this environment and stay home,” said Greg Morrisett, vice provost at Cornell Tech. “It’s giving a leg up to both China and India in terms of feeding their startup ecosystems.”

For Bradley Tusk, the CEO of Tusk Venture Partners, the changes to the H-1B program are simply “terrible.” American companies have to have access to top talent in order to compete at the highest levels, he said.

“America’s competitive advantage has always been the ability to attract the best talent from around the world,” Tusk said. “To limit our ability to recruit and compete is illogical.”

WATCH: JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon speaks out on H-1B visa changes

Technology

Alibaba shares rise over 6% after CEO unveils plans to boost AI spending

Published

8 hours ago

September 24, 2025

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Alibaba shares rise over 6% after CEO unveils plans to boost AI spending

Alibaba‘s Hong Kong-listed shares surged on Wednesday to reach their highest point since 2021 after the company said it will invest more in artificial intelligence and rolled out new AI products and updates.

Shares of the company jumped over 6%, while its total gains year to date rose above 107%.

The tech giant plans to increase spending on AI models and infrastructure development, on top of the 380 billion yuan ($53 billion) over three years it announced in February, Chief Executive Officer Eddie Wu said Wednesday at Alibaba Cloud’s annual flagship technology conference.

“We are vigorously advancing a three-year, 380 billion [yuan] AI infrastructure initiative with plans to sustain and further increase our investment according to our strategic vision in anticipation of the [artificial superintelligence] era,” Wu said.

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Alibaba shares surge after CEO unveils plans to boost AI spending

So-called ‘artificial superintelligence’ refers to AI that would hypothetically surpass the power and intelligence of the human brain, with the hypothetical benchmark becoming a growing focus of major AI companies.

Alibaba also officially unveiled the latest version of its Qwen large language models — the Qwen3-Max — on Wednesday, along with a series of other updates to its suite of AI product offerings.

Wu highlighted that Alibaba Cloud is strategically positioned as a “full-stack AI service provider,” delivering the computing power required for training and deploying large AI models on the cloud through its own data centers.

“The cumulative investment in global AI in the next five years will exceed $4 trillion, and this is the largest investment in computing power and research and development in history,” he added.

Technology

Tether reportedly seeks lofty $500 billion valuation in capital raise

Published

16 hours ago

September 23, 2025

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Tether reportedly seeks lofty 0 billion valuation in capital raise

Venezuelan Bolivar and U.S. Dollar banknotes and representations of cryptocurrency Tether are seen in this illustration taken Sept. 8, 2025.

Dado Ruvic | Array

Tether, the issuer of the largest stablecoin, is planning to raise as much as $20 billion in a deal that could put the crypto company’s value on par with OpenAI, according to a report from Bloomberg News.

The crypto company is looking to raise between $15 billion and $20 billion in exchange for a roughly 3% stake through a private placement, the report said, citing two individuals familiar with the matter. The transaction would involve new equity rather than existing investors selling their stakes, the people told the news service.

The report said that one person close to the matter warned that the talks are in an early stage, which means that the eventual details, including the size of the offering, could change.

However, the deal could ultimately value Tether at around $500 billion, according to the report. That would mean the crypto giant’s valuation would rival some of the world’s biggest private companies, including SpaceX and OpenAI. OpenAI’s fundraising round earlier this year valued the tech company at $300 billion.

Tether, which was once accused of being a criminal’s “go-to cryptocurrency,” has been furthering its plans to return to the U.S. in recent months, given President Donald Trump’s pro-crypto stance. The company earlier this month named a CEO for its U.S. business and launched a new token for businesses and institutions in the U.S. called USAT, which will be regulated in the U.S. under the GENIUS Act.

Stablecoin USD Tether (USDT) is pegged to the U.S. dollar with a market cap that recently surpassed $172 billion. In second place is Tether rival Circle’s USDC stablecoin, which is worth about $74 billion.