OpenAI has employed Mike Liberatore – xAI's newest high-profile departure – as its new enterprise finance officer, escalating tensions between billionaire rivals Sam Altman and Elon Musk.
Liberatore – who exited xAI in July after simply three months on the job – will begin Tuesday in his new function overseeing the corporate's large, all-in infrastructure spending, according to CNBC.
He'll report back to OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar and work with Greg Brockman's crew to handle the contracts and capital behind OpenAI's cloud computing technique.
Liberatore is simply the most recent in a sequence of govt departures from Musk's artificial-intelligence startup, as its chatbot Grok has suffered a string of flagrant public malfunctions. The rationale for his departure is unknown.
Different departures this summer season embody xAI's common counsel Robert Keele, senior lawyer Raghu Rao and co-founder Igor Babuschkin, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Liberatore, xAI and OpenAI didn't instantly reply to The Put up's requests for remark.
Liberatore beforehand spent practically 9 years at Airbnb, and likewise labored in senior finance roles at SquareTrade, eBay and PayPal.
At xAI, he was concerned in a $5 billion debt sale that Morgan Stanley helped orchestrate in June.
The corporate additionally raised $5 billion in fairness. Musk's SpaceX had contributed virtually half of the entire fairness raised.
Liberatore additionally led a few of xAI's data-center enlargement close to Memphis, Tenn.
In the meantime, tensions have continued to bubble up between archnemeses Altman and Musk.
Whereas the pair helped co-found OpenAI in 2015, Musk lower ties with the agency a couple of years later.
He has since launched a authorized battle towards the ChatGPT-maker's makes an attempt to restructure right into a for-profit entity.
OpenAI final week introduced that its nonprofit proprietor will proceed to have oversight over the corporate with an fairness stake price greater than $100 billion – a notable step in its restructuring.
Musk and Altman's feud has turned private, with the 2 incessantly buying and selling jabs at each other throughout interviews or in social media posts.
Earlier this yr, Musk made an unprecedented $97.4 billion bid to take over OpenAI, which the corporate's board shortly shot down.
Throughout a later interview with Bloomberg TV, when requested about Musk, Altman mentioned: “I don't suppose he's a cheerful individual.”
“In all probability his complete life is from a place of insecurity,” Altman added. “I really feel for the man. I actually do.”
Musk, in the meantime, has dubbed the OpenAI co-founder “Swindly Sam” in posts on his social media platform X.
OpenAI, which was just lately valued by buyers at a whopping $500 billion, has been ramping up its investments, together with a take care of Oracle to spend $300 billion on cloud computing expertise.
