Amid OpenAI turmoil, Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear appointed new CEO

Days after the stunning ouster of top executive Sam Altman, Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear has been appointed as the interim CEO of Microsoft-backed firm OpenAI. Taking to X (formerly Twitter), Shear confirmed that he has accepted the “once in a lifetime” opportunity.

Emmett Shear will be succeeding Sam Altman, who was fired by the OpenAI board on last Friday for “not being candid in his communication”. Shear will be appointed as the interim CEO of OpenAI effective immediately, also sharing his three-point plan for the future of the company.

“Today I got a call inviting me to consider a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to become the interim CEO of @OpenAI. After consulting with my family and reflecting on it for just a few hours, I accepted,” Emmet said in his X post.

“Before I took the job, I checked on the reasoning behind the change. The board did *not* remove Sam over any specific disagreement on safety, their reasoning was completely different from that,” he wrote. “I’m not crazy enough to take this job without board support for commercializing our awesome models,” he added.

Shear, in his tweet, shared his three point plan for the next 30 days as the interim CEO of OpenAI.

– Hire an independent investigator to dig into the entire process leading up to this point and generate a full report.

– Continue to speak to as many of our employees, partners, investors, and customers as possible, take good notes, and share the key takeaways.

– Reform the management and leadership team in light of recent departures into an effective force to drive results for our customers.

An hour before Shear’s post, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella confirmed he was hiring Altman to lead an AI research team at the global tech titan. Altman was rumoured to be opening his own AI firm, and had conflicts with the OpenAI board due his opinions on AI safety and expansion of the technology.