UPDATE - Salesforce CEO offers jobs to OpenAI employees who step down

ADDS MICROSOFT CTO'S COMMENTS

By Ovunc Kutlu

ISTANBUL (AA) - American cloud-based software company Salesforce's CEO is offering jobs to OpenAI employees who choose to resign from the firm after the surprise firing of CEO Sam Altman.

"Salesforce will match any OpenAI researcher who has tendered their resignation full cash & equity OTE (on-target earnings) to immediately join our Salesforce Einstein Trusted AI research team," Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff wrote late Monday on X.

Benioff also argued that Microsoft – which quickly snapped up Altman – was "not a winner of the events of the last few days" surrounding OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.

Most employees of OpenAI said earlier Monday in a letter that they intend to quit their jobs after Altman was let go from the US-based artificial intelligence research company.

The board of OpenAI fired Altman on Friday, saying he "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities."

Altman, 38, had served as the firm's CEO since 2020 and has already found a new role to lead a new AI research team at Microsoft, with Greg Brockman joining him – the firm's co-founder and former president.

The letter demanded that Altman be reinstated along with Brockman in OpenAI, with almost all the employees threatening to resign and join them at Microsoft.

Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott invited OpenAI employees to his company who chose to resign from the firm.

"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," Kevin Scott wrote Tuesday on X.

"Know that if needed, you have a role at Microsoft that matches your compensation and advances our collective mission," he added.

Scott wrote in a post Monday on X that Microsoft will continue supporting Open AI employees and their work.

After Microsoft began investing in OpenAI with an initial $1 billion in 2019, the amount is estimated to have climbed up to $13 billion.