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Comment by althea_tx | Hacker News Reader

“Funneled money to the startup” or “fundraised for the startup?”

There’s a world of difference between those two things.

Yes, all the reporting pointed to his attempts to raise money externally for an AI chip company, and specifically soliciting sovereign wealth funds.

I could understand board concerns about him being spread too thin, but more chip competition would pretty clearly benefit OpenAI as a large consumer of GPU chips, and this is very different than any sort of allegation around mishandling of funds (which has been ruled out by several people anyway).

From the initial board release, the issue then was not necessarily the fundraising or him being spread too thin, but rather that he was not forthright with the board. Every CEO manages the board to some extent and paints a picture for them, but if significant, material information about strategy and operations is being purposely withheld from the board, they cannot do their job.

OpenAI is/was critically partnered with Microsoft, using NVidia-based Azure for compute to the benefit of both.

There certainly appears to be a conflict of interest in Altman trying to create an NVidia competitor, and proliferation of AI, and seeing as he was seeking middle eastern funds it also raises questions about US limits on export of AI tech.

I was paraphrasing what I remember of the blurb of the article. I probably should have used fundraising, though.

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