The War Within OpenAI and What Comes Next

What a weekend! The OpenAI drama continued on Monday morning, as Ilya Sutskever—OpenAI’s chief scientist and a key figure in former CEO Sam Altman’s firing—tweeted, “I deeply regret my participation in the board’s actions.” Meanwhile, hundreds of OpenAI staffers, including Sutskever himself, reportedly signed an open letter threatening to quit unless Altman was reinstated.

In other words: Sutskever, at least, didn’t anticipate Microsoft would hire Altman and a flood of staffers would follow him. The future of OpenAI is up for grabs in the next few days.

That has mixed implications for the rest of the AI sector. For the big companies that compete with OpenAI—including Google—this should all be good news. Google, which has already delayed the release of its Gemini models, will likely take advantage of the situation to narrow OpenAI’s lead. Meta Platforms, whose open-source Llama models have become a strong alternative to closed-source ones from OpenAI and others, could also benefit. Microsoft, OpenAI’s partner, should also be strengthened if it ends up absorbing much of the startup’s talent.