We look inside the new
mind of OpenAI

The world watched in fascination as the wheels came off at OpenAI, makers of ChatGPT, in the past week. And in even greater fascination as the board was replaced and the ousted CEO, Sam Altman, restored to his position. New chairman Bret Taylor, former CEO of Salesforce and ex-chairman of Twitter, was decisive in his actions and leadership, and has made it clear he will do what it takes to look after shareholders of OpenAI.

Taylor’s approach was startling, but not surprising. In fact, all the elements that went into it have been signalled by the way he has approached business over the years. He was one of the original co-creators of Google Maps, and in 2007 left Google to build a social platform called FriendFeed, later sold to Facebook for $50m. At Salesforce, he was chief operating officer before becoming joint CEO with company founder Marc Benioff. He left to start his own AI company, and immediately attracted investment that valued his company at $100-million. 

In other words, he knows a thing or two about performance, as I wrote when I interviewed him while he was at Salesforce. He had just presided over stellar performance, and I asked him for the secret of rapid growth at a time when the world had emerged from the pandemic and the digital market was slowing down.

His answers, more than two years ago, speak directly to his approach at OpenAI this week, and his support of what Sam Altman is trying to achieve. 

First, it was about being customer focused:

“I really attribute it to three things,” he said at the time. “No 1 is the relevance of our platform. You hear this phrase ‘digital transformation’ . It’s not a digital transformation, it’s a digital customer transformation.

“Every company went through meaningful and in some cases really catastrophic business disruption as economies closed during the pandemic. And right now the No 1 agenda is getting back to growth…. It’s about marketing. It’s about e-commerce. It’s all the things in the front office of your business that are really about engaging with consumers, engaging with customers, and capitalising on the opportunity for growth.”

The second factor, he said, was “the economic and demand environment”.

“I think that sense of urgency we see in all of our customers now,” said Taylor. “It’s not a question of if they’re going to invest in a digital customer experience, it’s how fast.”

It was 2021, but he could well have been talking about the AI urgency of 2023.

The third factor, he said, was that ancient secret of business success: execution. 

And there have been few CEOs who have been more effective at execution this year than Sam Altman. Take him out of the mix and you would probably bring in a fairly bland equivalent who would avoid rocking the boat, and Taylor clearly recognised that.

While ChatGPT is not necessarily the best generative AI platform available, it has been the forerunner in democratising AI. It’s the first to roll out new features and functions and the ability of human beings to enhance their own output, using an online tool that costs very little. The previous board had voted to put a halt to this aggressive pursuit of what comes next in AI by firing Altman. In effect, they wanted to put the brakes on AI evolution. Taylor seems to be the ideal appointment to help push down on the accelerator.