Who is new OpenAI CEO Emmett Shear? All you need to know about the man replacing Sam Altman
LISBON, PORTUGAL - NOVEMBER 07: LISBON, PORTUGAL - NOVEMBER 07: Emmett Shear, Twitch, on the Contentmakers 1 Stage Stage during day two of Web Summit 2018 at the Altice Arena on November 7, 2018 in Lisbon, Portugal. In 2018, more than 70,000 attendees from over 170 countries will fly to Lisbon for Web Summit, including over 1,500 startups, 1,200 speakers and 2,600 international journalists. (Photo by Eoin Noonan /Web Summit via Getty Images)
It's been just a few days since Sam Altman, the former CEO of OpenAI, was ousted in a shock move — and his replacement has already been named.
After a weekend of rumor and speculation, Emmett Shear — former co-founder and CEO of Twitch — confirmed he will take the top job at probably the most high-profile AI company in the world.
In a post on X early Monday, Shear said he got a call from the company asking him to become interim CEO of the company and that he had accepted, "after consulting with my family and reflecting on it for just a few hours."
It comes after Altman, who led OpenAI through its development of the wildly popular generative artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, left after facing pressure from the board to step down.
The reasons behind his departure are unclear, but some insiders had expressed concern that Altman wasn't the right fit for the company. He is involved in another company, the eyeball-scanning tech company Worldcoin, for example, and there were concerns that this may have served as a distraction.
