California: LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman is stepping down from the board of ChatGPT maker OpenAI as his venture capital firm increasingly invests in other artificial intelligence companies, including those building on top of OpenAI’s products.
“With all the possibilities ahead, it’s important to think beyond any one application, company, industry when it comes to AI, because I believe its impact will be on a much greater magnitude,” Hoffman wrote in a post on LinkedIn. Hoffman is a partner at Greylock Partners and a board member at Microsoft Corp., which bought LinkedIn in 2016 and backs OpenAI.
Hoffman said the AI research company and its board have always monitored his involvement for conflicts of interest, but stepping down now will allow him to put to rest any possible future issues. More of the companies Greylock is backing make use of OpenAI’s application programming interfaces to build their own products.
“As OpenAI’s APIs become more important to the next wave of AI applications, Greylock and I will be investing in companies, like Tome and Coda, that will use the OpenAI APIs,” he said in the post. “I started to wonder: Will my position as a 501(c)(3) board member of OpenAI potentially look like it’s leading to differential economic advancement?”
