Introducing Emmett Shear: Sam Altman’s Former Classmate and the New OpenAI CEO!
Sam Altman will not be returning to OpenAI, despite pressure from investors and threats of employee departures. Interim CEO Mira Murati had initially planned to bring back Altman and former President Greg Brockman, but instead, former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear will be taking over as Interim CEO.
Who is Emmett Shear?
Emmett Shear was born in Seattle, Washington in 1983. He attended the Evergreen School for Gifted Children, then earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Yale University in 2005. Along with his friend Justin Kan, Shear applied to Y Combinator’s first class. , where he eventually built a calendar app called Kiko and sold it for nearly $250,000 on eBay.
Interestingly, ousted OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was in the same class in 2005 and was even pictured with Shear in a viral group photo. Altman also served as CEO of Y Combinator from 2014 to 2019.
In 2007, Shear co-founded Kan’s life with Justin.tv, which aired 24/7 and eventually shut down in 2014, but only after becoming one of the world’s largest live video platforms with nearly 30. million unique users per month.
However, in between, Justin.tv also started to focus on game content, which became very popular. So it became a separate platform that we now know as TwitchTV. Shear, along with his co-founders, ran the platform until 2014, when it was acquired by Amazon for nearly $970,000. He continued to serve as CEO of Twitch from 2014 until March of this year, when he resigned.
Now, Emmett Shear has been named OpenAI’s interim CEO, replacing his former classmate Sam Altman and, more recently, Mira Murat.
