What To Make of OpenAI’s New Board; The Startup Tackling Karpathy’s Vision

OpenAI’s late-Friday announcement of three new board members, as well as the reinstatement to its board of CEO Sam Altman, is a pivotal moment for the ChatGPT-creator, valued most recently at $86 billion. It’s now clear that the board has shed its origins as a quirky group of academics and techies with ties to under-the-radar movements like effective altruism. Now, OpenAI seems to be saying: take my board of directors seriously, by appointing board members with strong governance and business chops.

OpenAI’s three new board members are Sue Desmond-Hellmann, a former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Nicole Seligman, a former president of Sony Entertainment; and Fidji Simo, CEO of Instacart. All three currently serve on the boards of high-profile public companies, including Pfizer, Paramount Global and Shopify. 

Two of the three, at least, have taken companies through major crises or milestones—Seligman with the massive Sony cyber attack in 2014, and Simo with Instacart’s IPO in 2023. Each board member gives OpenAI insight into a different area—Desmond-Hellmann with healthcare and philanthropic circles; Seligman with media and entertainment; and Simo with consumer technology and Silicon Valley.