Former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers announced his resignation from OpenAI’s board of directors on Wednesday, several days after Congress released documents showing the close relationship Summers had with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Summers himself said in a statement sent to Axios: “Consistent with my announcement to withdraw from my public commitments, I have also decided to resign from the board of directors of OpenAI,” said the former president, who added that he was grateful “for the opportunity to serve me, I am excited about the company’s potential and look forward to following its progress.”
Summers, also a former president of Harvard University, said Monday that he will step back from all public engagements, adding that the move will allow him to “rebuild trust and mend relationships with those closest to me.” In a statement reported by Bloomberg, the former president said: “I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused. I take full responsibility for my reckless decision to continue to communicate with Epstein,” said Summers, who served as U.S. Treasury secretary from 1999 to 2001.
OpenAI has a board of directors made up of independents such as Bret Taylor, former CEO of Salesforce, as president; plus Adam D’Angelo, CEO of Quora; Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Zico Kolter, professor at Carnegie Mellon University; retired U.S. Army Gen. Paul M. Nakasone; Adebayo Ogunlesi, founder and CEO of Global Infrastructure Partners; Nicole Seligman, former head of Sony Corporation; Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and the aforementioned Larry Summers.
“Larry has decided to resign from the OpenAI Board of Directors, and we respect his decision. We appreciate his many contributions and the perspective he brings to the board,” the company said. start in a statement.
Separately, Harvard University announced Monday that it will open a new investigation into the former Treasury secretary’s connections to Epstein. Summers, the former president of Harvard University, where he now teaches, has been in the spotlight after newly released documents revealed that he and Epstein had an “unusually close relationship for years,” the university newspaper reported Tuesday. The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives voted nearly unanimously on Tuesday to force the release of Justice Department files on Epstein, an outcome Trump had fought for months.
OpenAI has become the start most valuable in the world, after reaching the valuation of 500,000 million dollars in the recent sale of shares by workers and former employees. The company overtook SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space services start-up, and ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, in the ranking.
The company closed the deal to become a for-profit company. A fundamental step for its future IPO. In fact, the market is already talking about a valuation of up to one trillion dollars, which would make it the largest IPO in history.
THE start It has Microsoft and SoftBank among its major shareholders. Additionally, it entered into an alliance with Nvidia in September, through which the AI chipmaker will invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI.
