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Comment by forrestthewoods | Hacker News Reader

Did Satya get played with the whole "Sam and Greg are joining Microsoft"? Was Satya in on a gambit to get the whole company to threaten to quit to force the board's hand?

It sure feels like a bad look for Satya to announce a huge hire Sunday night and then this? But what do I know.

Edit: don't know why the downvotes. You're welcome to think it's an obviously smart political move. That it's win/win either way. But it's a very fair question that every tech blogger on the planet will be trying to answer for the next month!

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Consider that Satya already landed a huge win by the stock price hitting ATH rather than taking a hit based on the news. Further consider that MS owns 49% of a company which could be valued at 80 billion on the condition that the company makes structural changes to the board to prevent this from happening again (as opposed to taking a dive if the company essentially died.) Then there's the uncertainty of the tech behind Bing's chat (and other AI tie-ins) continuing to be competitive vs Google and other players. If MS had to recreate their own tech, then they would likely be far behind even a stalled OpenAI. Seems to me that it makes little difference where this tech is being developed (in-house vs in a company which you own 49% of) in terms of access. Probably better that the development happens within the company which started all of this and has already been the leader, rather than starting over.

Im not so sure. This whole ordeal revealed how strong of a position Microsoft had all along. And that’s all still true even without effectively taking over OpenAI. Because now everyone can see how easily it could happen.

Something does still seem not flattering towards Microsoft about reneging on the Microsoft offer though.

I think it was mostly a bluff to try the pressure the board. I don't think Sam and most of Open AI rank and file would want to be employees of MSFT

Can CEOs make market moving "bluffs"? Sounds like another word for securities fraud.

(what isn't)

Of course they can, but they can't do these and sell/buy stocks involved at the same time. It's not illegal to influence stocks value (one could argue just being a CEO does that), but buying/selling while in possession of insider knowledge.

Let's say Sam called his broker and said to him on Friday we'll before the market closes. Buy MSFT stock. Then he made his announcement on Sunday and on Monday he told his broker to sell that stock before he announced he's actually coming back to (not at all)OpenAI. That would be illegal insider trading.

If he never calls his broker/his friends/his mom to buy/sell stock there's nothing illegal.

Securities fraud is more than insider trading. Misleading investors about a company’s financial health is fraud 101 and it sure looks like he lied about hiring someone to stem a precipitate MSFT drop.

Or, it did seem like a deal, but all of OAI did align that that to be more disastrous than whatever apocalypse that Altman as the CEO must entail.

Also to lessen the MSFT share impact.

I guess that theory was right, that Satya's announcement was just a delaying tactic to calm the market before Monday morning.

He announced the hire and that precipitated 90+ percent of the employees threatening to quit. It would be an understatement to say that the situation changed. Why does everyone want satya to be bad at his job and and not react quickly to a rapidly evolving situation? His decision to hire Sama paved the way for samas return.

"Hiring" them was just a PR tactic to keep Microsoft stock from tanking while they got this figured out.

Yeah there's a word for that type of thing

Doesn't seem that way to me. Seems like it was Satya sorta calling the board's bluff.

Huh? Satyas move was politically brilliant. Either outcome of Sama returning to OpenAI or Sama going to Microsoft is good for Microsoft as continuity and progress are the most important things right now for Microsoft. An OpenAI in turmoil would have been worthless.

Satyas maneuvering gave Sama huge leverage.

and yet microsoft has no seat on the board.

The board is not finalized. There will most likely be more seats and Microsoft will probably have at least one.

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