OpenAI Exposes the Clash of Governing Money and Mission
More companies are adding a social purpose to their profit-making businesses. Traditional board structures aren’t cut out to handle both.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman got caught in the mission-versus-money trap.
Photographer: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images
OpenAI’s power brokers seem to have decided that the quickest fix for last week’s dysfunction is to borrow a page from corporate America’s playbook by adding some establishment figures to its board.
The company’s initial new lineup of directors now includes some of the archetypes that make its boardroom look much more like everyone else’s: A well-regarded technology executive in the form of Bret Taylor, Salesforce Inc.’s former co-chief executive officer, and a bigwig economist in Larry Summers, the former Treasury secretary. The two join Quora’s Adam D’Angelo, the one holdover from the old group of directors that briefly ousted co-founder and CEO Sam Altman.