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OpenAI is adding David Vélez, founder and global chief executive of Nubank, a Latin American digital services firm, and Robin Vince, the chief executive of Bank of New York Mellon, to its board of directors, the company said.
The appointments will expand OpenAI’s board, bringing on two seasoned public-market executives who are well-known names in the financial world, as the company moves toward a public listing that could come as soon as later this year. Vince will chair the audit committee, OpenAI said.
The company has worked to improve its corporate governance after a previous set of directors abruptly fired Chief Executive Sam Altman three years ago for what they described as a lack of candor in his communications, throwing the company into disarray.
OpenAI’s board is chaired by Bret Taylor, the former co-CEO of Salesforce and chief executive of the AI startup Sierra. The board includes an eclectic mix of other directors such as retired U.S. Army General Paul Nakasone.
In an unconventional arrangement that dates to OpenAI’s nonprofit roots, the board is controlled by the OpenAI Foundation, a newly formed charity that emerged out of a recent restructuring of the company. Vélez and Vince will also join the foundation’s board, which is also chaired by Taylor.
Directors probably will have to address a range of thorny corporate governance issues that have recently troubled OpenAI, including several lawsuits that allege the company encouraged suicide and harmful delusions in ChatGPT.
Also at issue is that Altman continues to own no equity in the company.
Most public-company CEOs are large shareholders in their businesses and receive stock bonuses tied to performance, moves designed to align financial incentives. Altman, by comparison, has much of his wealth tied up in an array of other startups, a situation that has raised concerns among employees and lawmakers about potential conflicts of interest.
Altman’s dealings recently came under scrutiny from the House Oversight committee and several GOP attorneys who called for a Securities and Exchange Commission review. They cited The Wall Street Journal’s reporting from April that detailed Altman’s efforts to have OpenAI back companies he personally invested in. Taylor, OpenAI’s board chair, has said that Altman has been transparent in disclosing potential conflicts.
In November, Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard University, stepped down from OpenAI’s board following the release of emails linking him to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Since his appointment as board chair, Taylor has defended Altman’s leadership, which has come under the microscope since he was briefly fired in November 2023. Several former OpenAI executives, including former Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, raised concerns about Altman’s management to the former board of directors, contributing to their decision to fire him. Both of them since have left OpenAI, part of a stream of departures from the company’s executive suite.
“I think Sam’s remarkable. I think he’s a remarkable leader of AI, and I really trust his character,” Taylor said in an interview earlier this year with the tech publication Sources.
Vélez was previously a partner at Sequoia Capital, where he focused on investing in Latin America, and earlier worked at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Vince became chief executive of BNY in 2022 after spending 26 years at Goldman Sachs, where he was a partner and member of the management committee.
OpenAI has pivoted its business to selling AI tools to software developers, and is trying to reassert its lead in the AI race after falling behind its younger rival Anthropic. The company has recently grown revenue more slowly than Anthropic while burning far more cash, an unfavorable comparison ahead of potential IPOs where the two companies’ finances will be heavily scrutinized.
OpenAI recently hired Denise Dresser, the former Slack CEO, as chief revenue officer, tasking her with growing sales among large businesses looking to adopt AI tools in their workforces. Fidji Simo, the company’s No. 2 executive, recently left after her medical condition worsened. Altman had initially expected her to take a large role leading OpenAI after it went public. It’s unclear whether the company intends to replace her.
Write to Berber Jin at [email protected] and Emily Glazer at [email protected]