Straight after Altman’s departure, the answer to that question looked to be a resounding, hell yes! There was a very real risk the entire value of the company, estimated at around $86bn, based on a planned employee stock sale, was about to go up in smoke.
On one level, the company has now gone full circle and is back where it started with just a slight change of personnel on the board. However, there’s no disguising the fact that, for a short time, Microsoft’s shareholders’ money was circling the drain.
In his Stratechery newsletter, technology analyst Ben Thompson writes OpenAI’s melodrama will hopefully debunk the myth that anything but a for-profit corporation is the right way to organise a company.
Even before the recent drama, Thompson says he was more nervous than relieved when he found out Altman doesn’t own any equity in OpenAI: “There is something about making money and answering to shareholders that holds the more messianic impulses in check”.
It’s not that, for want of a phrase, greed is good; it’s just that, as an organising principle, no one’s come up with anything better.
“Trying to organise incentives by fiat simply doesn’t account for all of the possible scenarios and variables at play in a dynamic situation”, writes Thompson. “Harvesting self-interest has, for good reason, long been the best way to align individuals and companies.”
The solution to OpenAI’s woes therefore seems pretty clear: a healthy dose of good, old-fashioned capitalism.
