Sam Altman risks spreading himself too thin at OpenAI

Sam Altman has taken an even more prominent role at OpenAI as several key leaders have left the company.

Eleven months after Sam Altman’s chaotic ousting, OpenAI’s CEO is taking on an even more prominent role in the company he cofounded nearly a decade ago.

Now, as Altman leads OpenAI toward a possible for-profit future, some corporate management experts warn that the CEO could stretch himself too thin — taking on too many job functions.

Altman and a spokesperson for OpenAI didn’t respond to requests for comment from B-17.

Altman grabs the wheel

Altman had already been the company’s public face, speaking at panels and participating in high-profile interviews. Recently, he guided OpenAI through a monumental funding round, securing a $157 billion valuation for his startup.

As the company has grown, OpenAI has also shed some of its original founders, top talent, and high-ranking employees. The latest high-profile departure was Mira Murati, who had been OpenAI’s chief technology officer and one-time interim CEO.

In a company memo shared on X on September 25, Altman wrote the departure was amicable. He also announced a leadership change that will give him at least six direct reports.

Altman hasn’t explicitly said that he’s taking on an interim role as CTO; he did say in the memo that he would spend most of his time “on the technical and product parts of the company.”An unnamed source familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that Altman wouldn’t seek a replacement CTO for now.

Three corporate management experts told B-17 that Altman risks stretching himself too thin by serving as CEO and the public face of the company while moving forward without a chief technology officer.

“I don’t think that’s a smart move,” Peer Fiss, a professor of management and organization at the University of Southern California, told B-17. Fiss said he often focuses on high-profile matters of corporate governance, including OpenAI, Apple, and Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase, in his MBA classes.

The CTO, a role most commonly seen at tech firms, ensures that a company’s technology strategy is aligned with the organization’s goals. Fiss said it would be concerning if Altman were to move on without a CTO because the chief executive job is already demanding.

Patricia Lenkov, a founder of Agility Executive Search who said she has helped large financial firms, including JPMorgan, find a CTO, said that Altman should only keep the CTO role vacant on an interim basis.

“Often in this case, a CEO and the board will take the opportunity to really think through the new configuration of the company,” Lenkov said. “Now that they’re a $157 billion valuation company, they need different kinds of people.”

Since its founding in 2015, OpenAI has assumed a hybrid governance structure in which a nonprofit board controls the startup’s for-profit arm. This structure allows for some investor return while ensuring the company doesn’t stray from its stated mission to benefit all of humanity.

Reuters reported in September that the startup wanted to eliminate the nonprofit’s control in an effort to attract more investors by turning OpenAI’s core business into a for-profit corporation. On October 2, OpenAI announced it raised $6.6 billion in new funding.

Lenkov said that if Altman chooses to take on more and more job functions, the moves could look like a “big power grab,” which may make a C-suite search harder for OpenAI in the future.

“It’s going to be hard to attract the best person because one of the things that the best people always ask is, ‘Will I be left alone to do my job or will I be just a ‘yes’ person?” Lenkov said.

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at Yale University’s School of Management and founder of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, said there’s no reason for Altman to be “rolling up his sleeves and doing the work of running the enterprise and building the technology.” Instead, the CEO would benefit from a stable team working with him, Sonnenfeld said.

It’s possible that Altman could take on the CTO role on a temporary basis, Sonnenfeld said, “but it’s not likely that he can do this very long.”