By Krystal Hu, Anna Tong and Jeffrey Dastin
(Reuters) -Sam Altman, the recently ousted CEO of OpenAI, has been working on a new artificial intelligence venture he is planning to launch, sources briefed on the plan said on Saturday.
Former OpenAI president Greg Brockman, who said he quit OpenAI over Altman’s firing on Friday, is expected to join the effort, according to the Information, which reported the venture earlier citing a person familiar with the matter.
Altman could not be reached for comment and Brockman did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Some researchers at OpenAI, including Szymon Sidor, have quit the company over the CEO change but it was unclear if Sidor and others will join Altman’s new venture.
Altman and Apple’s former design chief Jony Ive have been discussing building a new artificial intelligence (AI) hardware device, the Information reported in September. It also reported at the time that SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son has also been involved in the conversation.
The board of OpenAI, the company behind hit product ChatGPT, on Friday pushed out its high-profile CEO Altman. Co-founder Brockman quit shortly after Altman was fired.
Altman’s ouster was over “breakdown of communications,” not “malfeasance”, Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap wrote in an internal company memo earlier Saturday that was viewed by Reuters.
(Reporting by Krystal Hu in New York, Anna Tong and Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco, Gursimran Kaur in Bengaluru; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Kenneth Li)