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Comment by jakey_bakey | Hacker News Reader

But Satya is making a few 100 mil a year, tops. Sam could easily make himself a billionaire with one raise. And who wants to control all of Microsoft, that's a whole lot of headaches

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And if governments squeeze on AI your start up is worth pennies over night. Earning 100 MILLION per year already removes any possible financial restrictions you had. Why do you need to have 10x that? Heck even earning "just" 10 millions per year will make all of your financial concerns go away.

Greed is hell of a thing

I suspect for people like Sam who are compulsively ambitious and competitive, it's not about the dollars. It's about winning.

Further, based on anecdotes from friends and Twitter who know Sam personally, I'm inclined to believe he's genuinely motivated by building something that "alters the timeline", so to speak.

Being the guy who built AGI will alter the timeline the most, so I think he'll be much more interested in that than being CEO of Microsoft.

AGI is decades if not centuries away. Cranking a plausible sentence generator to be even more plausible will not get there. I do not understand how people suddenly completely lost their minds.

The hype wave really is something else, eh? People are suddenly talking as if these advanced chatbots are on the precipice of genuine AGI that can run any system you throw at it, it's absolute lunacy

> The hype wave really is something else, eh?

I am old enough to remember the "How Blockchain Is Solving the World Hunger Crisis" articles but this new wave is even crazier.

>I am old enough to remember

So, like 15 year old?

If he was, he signed up to HN at 2!

I do think it's funny how the Blockchain Consultants have become AI Consultants though.

Here's one from 2019: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2019/12/26/ho...

According to [1], Nadella's base salary was $2.5m and stock awards and other compensation brought the total to ~$55m in 2022.

[1] https://microsoft.gcs-web.com/node/31056/html

I believe his total comp since becoming CEO passed 1B this summer, 9 years or so.

What's the functional difference between a billion and a hundred million?

Approximately 1 billion.

A billion means you can fund yourself for a really big idea. Not that you should!

Exactly, he could just launch a new company, most of the current OpenAI staff would follow him.

Should tell you something that he didn't. And no, I am not talking about ethics here.

There must be an insane number of non-competes though, to stop that? Especially with the amount of VC funding - that must have been included?

Non-competes are not legally enforcable in California, or so I hear.

I think the only edge cases are for executives of companies, and even then it's pretty limited, but I imagine this could be one of the examples. IANAL though - it's just from what I've seen discussed elsewhere.

https://www.ottingerlaw.com/blog/executives-should-not-ignor...

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

The new models and data would stay at OpenAI. You can have thousands of researchers and compute, but if you don’t have “it”, you are behind (ask Google).

In Microsoft he still has access to the models, and that’s all he needs to execute his ideas.

Yes, however they’ll be shielded from lawsuits from OpenAI at Microsoft.

They could, but they'd be massively hamstrung by lack of GPU's. Pretty much all supply is locked up for a good few years right now.

Assuming a MAG wont offer it.

> most of the current OpenAI staff would follow him

Source please? This just keeps getting repeated but there’s extremely limited public support and neither Sam’s nor the board’s decisions indicate he has a whole lot of leverage.

As in liquidate a billion in one raise? Is that kosher these days?

Sam is rich, I assume being CEO of one of the worlds largest companies is a far greater award than extra money when you're at the billionaire level, especially at 38. But I do think this is probably non-compete related too.

Sam already is a billionaire

Sam is not a billionaire. By all industry accepted accounts (easily googlable), his net worth is in the range of 500 to 700 million.

Do you have a source for your assertion?

He’s definitely a billionaire

He is not on Forbes billionaire list.

All the other somewhat reliable sources do not have him as one.

So what is your source for your assertion?

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