OpenAI Has Just the Right Person to Curb Its Wild Spending

About three years ago the nonprofit board of OpenAI fired its chief executive officer, Sam Altman, because of complaints that he wasn’t “consistently candid” with its members. Effectively, he wasn’t deemed fit to fulfil the company’s noble mission of benefiting humanity, though he was reinstated after a staff revolt.

OpenAI today is still controlled by a nonprofit board, but one with a new set of members who are putting the company under more pressure to deliver investor returns. There’s little chance of another dramatic termination. But with Altman’s pharaonic spending under scrutiny, they may nudge him to follow the lead of his more prudent chief financial officer, Sarah Friar.