Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/ Getty Images; Isabel Fernandez-Pujol/ BI
- Sam Altman says he didn't know OpenAI had non-disparagement clauses in exit deals.
- But a follow-up Vox report suggests Altman may have known, citing leaked documents and ex-staffers.
- Silicon Valley types are voicing their skepticism of whether Altman was being entirely truthful.
Silicon Valley types are skeptical about whether Sam Altman knew OpenAI had non-disparagement clauses in its exit agreements.
Tech firm workers have weighed in on the recent chaos at OpenAI after a bombshell Vox report said that the ChatGPT maker could take back vested equity from departing employees if they didn't sign non-disparagement agreements.
Sam Altman took to X soon after the report was published, writing: "This is on me and one of the few times i've been genuinely embarrassed running openai; i did not know this was happening and i should have."
The claims against OpenAI didn't go down well in the tech community, and some were unconvinced that Altman was being entirely honest.
Another story published by Vox on Wednesday, citing unnamed former OpenAI employees and leaked documents, seemed to bring into question Altman's claim that he was out of the loop.
Vox published a document showing the OpenAI chief signed incorporation documents for the holding company that handles OpenAI's equity. According to the report, some former staffers were given just seven days to sign separation agreements.
Naveen Rao, vice president of generative AI at DataBricks, wrote that "there's just no way senior leaders didn't know about these separation terms."
Neel Nanda, who leads Google DeepMind's safety research team, said it looked like OpenAI was caught in a "series of public lies," while Nils Reimers, director of machine learning at Cohere, said it was "unacceptable behavior" by OpenAI.
Meta researcher Soumith Chintala praised the follow-up Vox report, saying it brought "receipts that it wasn't just some standard exit paperwork from OpenAI."
Former OpenAI employee Jacob Hilton, meanwhile, posted a thread on X on Friday stating that he left a year ago and that he signed a non-disparagement agreement.
He also said he signed a separate non-disclosure about the agreement so he wouldn't lose his vested equity.
"The agreement was unambiguous that in return for signing, I was being allowed to keep my vested equity, and offered nothing more," he wrote, "I do not see why anyone would have signed it if they had thought it would have no impact on their equity."
Hilton added that OpenAI contacted him a day earlier to release him from the agreement as a result of Vox's report.
OpenAI didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, sent outside normal working hours.