Focus on Work, Not Boardroom Drama: OpenAI’s Message to Staff

A senior OpenAI manager urged employees on Tuesday to shift their focus towards product development and partnerships, rather than being preoccupied with the uncertainty surrounding Sam Altman’s potential return as CEO. The manager emphasized the need to prioritize shipping products. Altman was abruptly dismissed by the board on Friday.

Chief product officer Peter Deng said in a message to OpenAI employees on Tuesday that “we decided the best way to channel our energy” was into product development, according to a memo reviewed by Bloomberg.

The memo was drafted with the intention of spreading the message that OpenAI is still open for business, and it comes as its customers have become a concern at the company, according to a person familiar with the decision-making process. Many OpenAI customers have sought reassurance that the company will continue to operate even as it races to identify its next CEO and prevent its employees from organizing mass layoffs.

Deng also said the company will make its Voice product available for free to ChatGPT users, something it also posted on X, formerly Twitter. With the voice feature, the chatbot can answer spoken questions and commands with its own speech. The release was planned earlier, said a person familiar with the situation, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss private information.

OpenAI’s situation was made worse on Tuesday by the fact that its most famous product, the chatbot ChatGPT, was not available to all users in the afternoon. According to the website of the company that monitors the status of online services, the API services of ChatGPT and OpenAI had a partial outage after 2 p.m. Pacific Time.

OpenAI’s health monitor posted that the issue that caused the outage “has been identified and a fix is being implemented,” although it had not been resolved hours later. In an X release, Logan Kilpatrick, a member of the company’s developer relations staff, acknowledged the issue and said it “should be resolved soon.”

Deng’s message to staff, posted on an internal Slack channel, was upbeat. He said employees can order pizza and pay for it. Most of them are not in the office because the company is on Thanksgiving week. “Raise the slice and share the picture on the thread so we can enjoy this moment together,” Deng wrote. He signed off with “One team, one mission” with a pizza emoji.

OpenAI’s fate has been in limbo for days since Altman’s shock board firing on Friday, followed by high-stakes negotiations to bring him back. Almost all of the company’s employees have said they will quit OpenAI if Altman is not reinstated, among other demands.

Those familiar with the negotiations regarding Altman’s possible return to the company have said the groups want to reach a conclusion before Thanksgiving.

Deng emphasized that the company was still operating despite the chaos in the boardroom, and pointed to COO Brad Lightcap’s X message, in which the COO emphasized OpenAI’s commitment to customers. In the post, Lightcap responded to a suggestion that competitors were trying to use the company’s leadership upheaval to hide its business.

Deng said in a memo that the company met with Boston Consulting Group on Tuesday morning to discuss expanding its partnership with OpenAI and that BCG complemented its “mojo with culture and leadership.” Deng said in the memo: “We are grateful to have heard from dozens of customers who emphasized their support.”