Coinbase CEO to OpenAI Board: You Just “Torched $80B of Value”

Less than 48 hours after Sam Altman was fired from OpenAI, Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase made a post highlighting some of the impact his departure might cause the ChatGPT creator.

Armstrong eulogized Sam Altman for taking OpenAI’s valuation to $80 billion, a massive worth he believe the company has just ‘torched” by ousting the tech veteran.

Coinbase CEO Suspects Foul Play

A few weeks ago, OpenAI achieved a valuation of $86 billion, placing the AI powerhouse above the likes of Stripe and Shein. Considering this achievement, Coinbase CEO suspects that the decision to throw Altman out of the company may have been premeditated, more like a coup per his position.

“If this is really some EA, decel, AI safety coup at OpenAI, the board just torched $80B of value, destroyed a shining star of American capitalism, and will be sued to high heaven by investors,” Coinbase CEO tweeted.

As an explanation, the AI firm claimed that Altman has not been forthright in his dealings with the board and as such, has prevented the body from exercising its functions most optimally.

Still, some other crypto proponents believe that the action meted to the former OpenAI CEO was unwarranted. The ripple effect of Altman’s exit from the company was immediately seen. Markedly, OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman announced his immediate departure from the firm as well.

Altman and Brockman’s “New Thing”

The Coinbase CEO thinks that it is likely that Altman and Brockman would come up with a new venture especially after the latter stated that he still believes in the mission of creating safe (artificial general intelligence) that benefits all of humanity. 

If they choose to, Armstrong thinks all talented employees at OpenAI might send in their resignation and move over to the “new thing” by Altman and Brockman. It is worth noting that Cardano founder, Charles Hoskinson has put forth an offer to Sam Altman should he decide to explore a decentralized LLM.

By doing this, they would have ended up skipping some of the rules of the woke non-profit board, ejected the decels/EAs, maintained founder control, and “avoided nonsensical regulation.” The responsibility that the employees would have would be to “just build.” 

Furthermore, Armstrong mentioned that this kind of unjustified action was once seen with Google and some crypto companies and it ended up impacting their valuation negatively in the long run.