Former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear will lead OpenAI after Altman’s exit

Emmett Shear is going to be the new interim CEO of OpenAI, the AI research firm behind the popular generative AI chatbot, ChatGPT. Shear is known for his leadership at the video streaming site, Twitch, from which, he resigned earlier this year.

Shear confirmed this new job role on the social media site, X, “Today I got a call inviting me to consider a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become the interim CEO of OpenAI. After consulting with my family and reflecting on it for just a few hours, I accepted.”

Last week, OpenAI fired Sam Altman, the decision made by the OpenAI board says that Altman no longer has the capacity to lead the company. At the same time, OpenAI announced Mira Murati as the new interim CEO of the company until a new CEO is hired. Mira Murati is also the CTO of the company.

However, the new confirmation means that Mira may not get a shot at the interim CEO rank at OpenAI.

Shear wrote a long post on X describing how he would operate in this new responsibility at OpenAI and what would be his plans to navigate through the current turmoil inside the AI research firm.

Emmet Shear:

Shear, who’s currently 40, was born and grew up in Seattle and has a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Yale University. He stepped won as CEO of Twitch in March this year after serving the video streaming platform for over 16 years

He co-founded the platform in 2006 as Justin.tv, before it was renamed Twitch in 2011. Following its quick popularity, the platform was later acquired by e-commerce giant, Amazon for under $1 billion.

Post-Twitch, Shear has been working on advising startups on everything from fundraising strategy to technical approach.