Ilya Sutskever Stands by His Role in Sam Altman’s OpenAI Ouster: ‘I Didn’t Want It to Be Destroyed’
Key takeaways
- Sutskever drew the spotlight, revealing an ownership stake in Open AI’s $850-billion for-profit arm that is currently worth about $7 billion.
- Brockman was one of the research lab’s original cofounders, and Sutskever joined shortly afterward, turning down a $6 million annual compensation offer from Google.
- Sutskever, who arrived in the courtroom wearing a dress shirt and slacks, the first male witness to testify without a suit jacket, appeared to be dejected about no longer being involved with OpenAI.
Why this matters: a development in AI with implications for how people work, create, and decide.
Photo-Illustration: WIRED staff; Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Elon Musk’s trial against Open AI and Microsoft entered its final stretch on Monday, with testimony from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, former Open AI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, and current Open AI chairman Bret Taylor.
Sutskever drew the spotlight, revealing an ownership stake in Open AI’s $850-billion for-profit arm that is currently worth about $7 billion. That makes him one of the largest known individual shareholders of OpenAI. Earlier in the trial, OpenAI president Greg Brockman acknowledged for the first time that he has around $30 billion worth of OpenAI shares.
Brockman was one of the research lab’s original cofounders, and Sutskever joined shortly afterward, turning down a $6 million annual compensation offer from Google. Brockman said he and Sutskever were “joined at the hip,” until Sutskever helped lead Sam Altman’s brief removal as OpenAI CEO in 2023. Sutskever had helped collect evidence to show Altman’s alleged history of deception, and even assisted in drafting a memo to the board. Though they tried to repair the relationship, Sutskever has been estranged from Brockman and Altman ever since, a lawyer for OpenAI said on Monday.