Emmett https://twitter.com/eshear/status/1727210329560756598

Genuinely curious - what’s the comp package like for 72 hours of interim CEOing a 80b company?

Bragging rights, party invitations, and one hell of a story.

Office 365 subscription for one year and GitHub copilot using your own creation

Irrelevant compared to the reputation boost for helping the company get itself back on track.

I don't think anybody had high expectations for him, but he really pulled through.

Doubt he took this job for financial comp so even if he got paid, it probably wasn't much.

Equity is a big part of CEO pay packages and OpenAI has weird equity structure, plus there was a very real chance OpenAI's value would go to $0 leaving whatever promised comp worthless. So Emmett likely took the job for other reasons.

Nothing maybe?

A firm handshake. They had no time to ink a benefits package, my dude.

I am really surprised by people thinking this guy did anything to get sama back. He was probably not even in the room.

also satya

https://twitter.com/satyanadella/status/1727207661547233721

On a side tangent, absolutely amazing how all this drama unfolded on Twitter/X. No Threads, no Mastodon, no Truth Social or Blue whatever.

Say what you want about Elon’s leadership but his instinct to buy Twitter was completely right. To me it seemed like any social network crap but he realized it was important.

Not trying to be a dick but:

1. He tried to not buy Twitter very hard and OpenAI’s new board member forced his hand

2. It hasn’t been a good financial decision if the banks and X’s own valuation cuts are anything to go by.

3. If his purpose wasn’t to make money…all of these tweets would have absolutely been allowed before Elon bought the company. He didn’t affect any relevance changes here.

Why would one person owning something so important be better than being publicly owned? I don’t understand the logic.

> Why would one person owning something so important be better than being publicly owned?

Usually publicly owned things end up being controlled by someone: a CEO, a main investor, a crooked board, a government, a shady governmental organization. At least with Elon owning X, things are a little more transparent, he’s rather candid where he stands.

Now, the question is “who owns Musk?” of course.

I haven't seen this type of drama in years, surely thats not enough to sustain X

He bought Twitter for power, omnipresence and reputation. Allowing him to play the game his way.

Funny, I thought he bought Twitter because he shot his mouth off in public and the courts made him follow through.

A huge amount of advertisers ran away, the revenue cratered and it is probably less than the annual debt servicing (revenue, not profit), the current valuation, accordingly to Musk math (https://fortune.com/2023/09/06/elon-musk-x-what-is-twitter-w...), is 1/10 of the acquisition price. But yes, it was a masterstroke. I don’t remember any other masterstroke in history that managed to lose 40B with a single acquisition.

I’d be rather reluctant to question the financial decisions of one of wealthiest men on earth. Losing 40B could feel quite different to him than to you or me. Besides, it’s unrealized loss until he sells.

Or goes bankrupt.

I think it's just this particular drama - OpenAI people are of the same tribe as Elon, and surely they prefer Twitter/X, not Mastodon or Bluesky.

Have you used Mastodon? I don't think you can follow drama on Mastodon unless you're already part of the drama.

What tribe is that? And why would they favor one network over the others?

The silicon valley/startups/VC tribe, and they favour Twitter because 1. that's what their friends use and 2. they like Elon Musk, they want to be like him.

Most of these people have been on Twitter long before Musk had his hands on it.

Many OpenAI employees expressed their support for Sam at some point also on Twitter. Microsoft CEO (based in Redmond) tweeted quite a lot. Tech media reporters like Emily Chang and Kara Swisher also participated. The last one is quite critical of Twitter and I am not sure they all like Musk that much.

Are they all in the same “tribe”? Maybe you should enlarge the definition?

How about us all IT people who watched the drama unfolding on Twitter while our friend are using FB and Insta, we are far from SV and have mixed feelings about Elon Musk while never in a million years wanting to be like him? Also same “tribe”?

Interesting take.

By all accounts he paid about double what it was worth and the value has collapsed from there.

Probably not a great idea to say anything overtly political when you own a social media company, as due to politics being so polarised in the US, any opinion is going to divide your audience in half causing a usage collapse and driving support to competing platforms.

https://fortune.com/2023/09/06/elon-musk-x-what-is-twitter-w...

His worse problem is that he owns both a social media network and a bigger separate business that wants to operate in the US, Turkey, India, China, Saudi Arabia, etc. which means he can't fight any censorship requests in any of those countries. (Which the previous management was actually very aggressive about.)

His worst personal problem is that he keeps replying "fascinating" to neo-Nazis and random conspiracy theorists because he wants to be internet friends with them.

well and he also tried very hard to not buy it until Twitter sued in order to have the contract upheld

His instinct was to walk away from his offer. He had to be forced to buy the company.

His second wife apparently asked him to buy Twitter and fix its, in her opinion, liberal bias.

i mean he also tried his hardest to back out of the deal until he realized he couldnt

Only because he had to buy it while the stock market was tanking.

What does this have to do with Elon again? FYI Twitter existed before October 2022. Account join dates are public. Every single person involved in this, incl. OpenAI staff posting for solidarity, joined Twitter years before Elon's takeover.

Inertia is a bitch.

Now the blue tick has same effect on me on Twitter that the red N logo has on any film that came from the Netflix formula factory. I already know it’s going to be bad, regurgitated. Does everyone have a Twitter blue tick now? Or is that just a char people are using in their names?

>Does everyone have a Twitter blue tick now? Or is that just a char people are using in their names?

Blue tick just means user bought a subscription (X Premium) now - one of the features is "reply prioritization", so top replies to popular tweets are from blue ticks.

https://help.twitter.com/en/using-x/x-premium

What does Ilya have to say?

he also retweeted OpenAI's and Sam's announcements

probably a heart emoji.

But what color heart emoji?

Purple?

That’s certainly some very.. deliberate.. board picks.

Summers, too.

Welp.

Say what you want about Summers specifically but I think it's a good idea getting some economists on the board. They are academics but focused on practical, important issues like loss of jobs and what that means for the economy and society. Up until now it seems like the board members have either been AI doomers with no practical experience or Silicon Valley types that inevitably have conflicts of interest, because everybody is starting their own AI venture now.

This has nothing to do with Summers being an economist and everything to do with the fact that he used to run the parent agency of the IRS. Summers is the least sensible board pick imaginable unless one takes this fact and the coming regulatory catastrophe into account.

>This has nothing to do with Summers being an economist and everything to do with the fact that he used to run the parent agency of the IRS.

It has literally nothing to do with that. The reason he's on the board now is because D'Angelo wanted him on it. You could have a problem with that, but you can't use his inclusion as evidence that the board lost.

If we achieve AGI it has the potential to capture most (if not all) economic value. Larry Summers was a deliberate choice indeed.

It seems US Attorneys were calling the Open AI board.

It helps having somebody with government ties on board now.