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1 year ago
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OpenAI have announced their new CEO as Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear after his predecessor Sam Altman was fired from the role.
Shear has come in as the interim chief-exec putting murmurs of a return for Altman to bed, after concerns arose that the latter had been ignoring the potential dangers of artificial intelligence.
Within hours of the confirmation of the change, Microsoft swept in the hire 38-year-old Altman.
So, who is the man replacing Altman at the ChatGPT developer? Find out about Emmett Shear by reading on.
OpenAI have announced that Emmett Shear (pictured) will be their new interim CEO
He takes over from Sam Altman (above) who has been snapped up by Microsoft
Shear (right) launched his first company with childhood friend Justin Kan (left)
Who is Emmett Shear?
Shear, born in 1983, grew up in Seattle, and attended the Evergreen School for Gifted Children.
There, he met Justin Kan when the pair were pre-teens, with whom he would go on to found his first company.
The pair remained friends throughout middle school and high school as they plotted their future projects - including one which won them a NASA-sponsored competition.
Shear majored in Computer Science at Yale University, graduating with a Bachelor of Science in 2005.
At university, he met another future entrepreneur and colleague in Michael Seibel.
Shear and Kan's company Justin.tv became solely known as Twitch in 2011 - the same year it was bought by Amazon for nearly $1 billion
Which companies has Emmett Shear worked for?
The same year Shear graduated, he and Kan launched a calendar app called Kiko, which they sold on Ebay in September 2006 for $250,000.
Also that September, Shear and Kan founded Justin.tv with Seibel and Kyle Vogt, with Shear as the Chief Technology Officer.
This was a streaming site which began with one channel - streaming Kan's life 24/7 - but turned into a site on which users could launch their own channels and stage their own live broadcasts.
Justin.tv divided its site into different categories, and in 2011 separated its gaming content onto a new site: Twitch.tv - which now receives over 30 million active users each day, either creating live content, or viewing others'.
Shear became Twitch's CEO, overseeing the company's realignment with Justin.tv in 2014, when everything fell back under the brand Twitch Interactive as Amazon acquired it for almost $1 billion.
That sale, and that of Kiko, along with his earnings across his high-profile career contribute to a net worth which has been reported as between $100 million and $500m.
It was only in March 2023 that Shear finally left Twitch - after 2022 revenue of $2.8bn - to be replaced by Dan Clancy, and he has since been a part-time contributor to Y Combinator - the startup fund which fueled his first endeavor in 2005.
In taking up his role at OpenAI, Shear cited his family as a key consideration around the 'once-in-a-lifetime opportunity', but he keeps his family life private so it is unclear who exactly that refers to.
Shear (pictured) finally stood down as Twitch's CEO in March 2023
Altman was removed as OpenAI's CEO on November 17 over fears that he had been ignoring the dangers of AI
What happened to Sam Altman?
Altman founded OpenAI with ten others in 2015, and the company later became known for its leading chatbot ChatGPT.
However, Altman was pulled as over fears he was flouting the dangers of artificial intelligence, according to a New York Times report.
The concerns were aired by a fellow OpenAI board member and culminated with the 38-year-old's sudden firing on November 17 2023 - sending the tech world into frenzy of speculation.
That speculation was put to bed when the OpenAI board announced their new interim CEO on November 20, with Altman moving to Microsoft to work on their AI team the same day.
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