Microsoft offering to match compensation for OpenAI employees threatening to resign

A top Microsoft executive announced that the company will match compensation for any OpenAI employees who threatened to resign from their positions with the company amid the ouster of former CEO Sam Altman. 

Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott made the announcement Tuesday on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. 

“To my partners at OpenAI: We have seen your petition and appreciate your desire potentially to join Sam Altman at Microsoft’s new AI Research Lab,” Scott wrote in his post. “Know that if needed, you have a role at Microsoft that matches your compensation and advances our collective mission.”

Scott’s announcement comes a day after Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that Altman, along with former OpenAI co-founder and President Greg Brockman and other colleagues, will join the tech giant to lead a “new advanced AI research team.”

“We remain committed to our partnership with OpenAI and have confidence in our product roadmap, our ability to continue to innovate with everything we announced at Microsoft Ignite, and in continuing to support our customers and partners,” Nadella said in his X post, also noting that former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear has taken over as interim CEO of OpenAI. 

“We look forward to getting to know Emmett Shear and OAI’s new leadership team and working with them. And we’re extremely excited to share the news that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, together with colleagues, will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team,” Nadella added. “We look forward to moving quickly to provide them with the resources needed for their success.”

It’s been days since Altman, who founded OpenAI alongside Brockman in 2015, stepped down from his position with the tech company after an internal review found that he was “not consistently candid in his communications with the board.”

OpenAI is known for launching the popular ChatGPT last November, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot that automatically generates humanlike responses to users’ queries in a way that is more advanced than previous technology. 

The popularity of OpenAI’s chatbot resulted in other major tech companies, including Microsoft, introducing or announcing their own AI-powered services this year.

In response to Altman’s ouster from the company, more than 600 OpenAI employees signed an open letter threatening to join Altman at Microsoft if their company’s current board of directors doesn’t step down from their positions, according to CNBC.