Gm. Just wow. What a weekend. Not much more to say than that. It was so crazy, I have to know something from all of you:

— Stephen Flanders

🏠 AI

Sam Altman Fired

You’ve probably heard the news.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been relieved of his duties. It’s the most stunning plot twist since last year’s FTX collapse…which also involved a dude named Sam.

In case you took a visit to Patrick Star this weekend, here’s everything we know so far:

• On Friday, OpenAI announced a leadership transition. Sam Altman is out for “not being consistently candid in his communications”.

• Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president and co-founder, decides to quit. He also releases a timeline of events. TLDR: it was an ambush, and always avoid random Google meets.

• It becomes increasingly clear that OpenAI’s Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever was at the center of the coup, and the tensions were between the for-profit and non-profit wings of the company.

• Three senior OpenAI researchers decided to follow Altman out the door.

• Naturally, the people (cough Microsoft cough) who invested billions into OpenAI were not happy to see the CEO get fired with no notice. So they start to put the screws on OpenAI to bring him back.

• That, combined with the potential of a mass exodus of talent, leads to OpenAI entering negotiations with Altman to bring him back. And for a while, it looked like it would work and the board would even resign…

• But, those discussions broke down on Sunday night, and the board hired former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear as CEO.

Even though the saga is ‘officially’ done, there are so many unanswered questions.

Why did the board fire Sam? What does Sam and Greg do next? What will OpenAI’s investors do? What will happen to OpenAI? Microsoft? When will Ilya speak? What tech does OpenAI have behind closed doors? I could go on and on.

Perhaps above all else, the firing of Altman exposed deep rifts between the e/acc side of tech and the EA side of tech.

There is perhaps no bigger determiner to the future of tech than the winner of that battle.

The Big Picture: This story isn’t anywhere near finished yet.

🤝 THE LATEST IN…

TECH

• Cruise’s CEO is out.

• As is Meta’s head of AR. 

• As are a bunch of people working on Alexa.

• It’s looking like the Vision Pro will be coming out in March.

AI

• Discord is shutting down its AI chatbot.

• Google’s Gemini model is facing delays.

• Meta disbanded its responsible AI team.

• AIConfig is here to help you out.

SCIENCE

• Starship had a very successful 2nd flight.

• Don’t give up on superconductors yet. 

• Let’s turn carbon dioxide into fuel.

• This laser can fit on your fingertip.

CRYPTO

• Fidelity is applying for a spot ETH ETF.

• Jump Trading and Wormhole are parting ways.

• Worldcoin is feeling the Altman pain. 

• Here are some fresh yield farming opportunities.

🏃‍♀️ QUICKIES

Raise: InPlanet has raised a $4.6M seed round to remove carbon through rock weathering.

Stat: 216: The number of exits in Q3, the lowest total since Q2 2013.

Rabbit hole: Why Dumb Ideas Capture Smart And Successful People (Rob Henderson)

🤩 MONDAY MOTIVATION

Goosebumps.

🧠 POLL

Here are the results of last week’s very ironic poll considering the circumstances:

For this week:

🛠️ FOUNDERS CORNER

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