OpenAI urges employees to focus on work despite boardroom drama

The fate of OpenAI has been in limbo for days, starting with the board of directors’ shock firing of Sam Altman on Friday. AFP

A senior OpenAI manager emphasised on Tuesday that it's time to “get back to shipping” products. This is part of an overarching effort to redirect the company's focus towards developing software and forging partnerships, moving away from the speculation surrounding Sam Altman's potential return to the chief executive role after being summarily fired by the board on Friday.

In a message to OpenAI employees on Tuesday, Peter Deng, a vice president of product, said that “we decided that the best way to channel our energy” is developing products, according to a note reviewed by Bloomberg.

The memo was drafted in an effort to spread the message that OpenAI is still open for business, and comes as its customers have grown worried about tumult at the company, according to a person familiar with the decision making.

Many OpenAI clients have sought reassurances that the company remains operational even as it races to figure out who its next chief executive will be and prevent its employees from staging a mass resignation.

Mr Deng also said that the company would make its Voice product available for free for ChatGPT users, a move it also posted about on social media platform X. The Voice feature lets the chatbot respond to spoken questions and commands with its own speech. That release had been previously planned, according to a source.

Making matters worse for OpenAI on Tuesday, its best-known product, the chatbot ChatGPT, was unavailable to some users during the afternoon. According to a company webpage that tracks the status of its online services, ChatGPT and OpenAI’s application programming interface services experienced a partial power cut starting after 2pm Pacific time.

OpenAI’s status tracker posted that the issue causing the power cut “has been identified and a fix is being implemented”, though it hadn’t been resolved hours later. In a post on X, a member of the company’s developer relations staff, Logan Kilpatrick, acknowledged the issue and said it “should be resolved shortly”.

Mr Deng’s message to staff, which was posted on an internal Slack channel, was upbeat. He said that employees could order pizza and expense it. Most of them aren’t in the office because the company has Thanksgiving week off. “Raise a slice and share a photo in the thread so we can enjoy this moment together,” Mr Deng wrote. He signed off, “One team, one mission” with a pizza emoji.

The fate of OpenAI has been in limbo for days, starting with the board of directors’ shock firing of Mr Altman on Friday, followed by high-stakes negotiations to get him reinstated. Almost all of the company’s employees have said they would resign from OpenAI if Mr Altman were not brought back, among other demands.

People familiar with the negotiations around possibly returning Mr Altman to the company have said that the groups want to reach a resolution before the Thanksgiving holiday.

Stressing that the company was still operating despite the boardroom chaos, Mr Deng pointed to a post on X from chief operating officer Brad Lightcap, in which he emphasised OpenAI’s commitment to customers. In the post, Mr Lightcap was responding to the suggestion that competitors were trying to capitalise on the company’s leadership upheaval to poach its business.

Mr Deng said in the note that the company met with Boston Consulting Group on Tuesday morning to discuss expanding its partnership with OpenAI, and that BCG complimented its “mojo with culture and leadership”.

In the memo, Mr Deng said, “We are grateful to have heard from dozens of customers who emphasised their support.”