OpenAI today appointed former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear as the company's interim CEO, and Shear also officially announced that he accepted the invitation. Shear said he would make changes to OpenAI's management team and hire an independent investigator to investigate Altman's departure. "It is clear that the entire process and communication regarding Altman's removal was extremely poor and has seriously damaged the company's reputation," he said.


EmmettShear

On Saturday, Altman was fired from OpenAI’s board of directors. At that time, OpenAI did not give a specific reason, but said that Altman was not candid enough in communicating with the board of directors and was incapable of continuing to lead OpenAI.

Shear, 40, worked at Amazon's video streaming platform Twitch for 16 years. He resigned as CEO in March this year in order to spend more time with his family.

Twitch was formerly Justin.tv, co-founded by Shear and others, and was renamed Twitch in 2011. Due to its rapid growth and recognition by the gaming community, Twitch was acquired by Amazon in 2014 for just under $1 billion.

Shear is considered an outspoken advocate for artificial intelligence safety. He is also a part-time partner at startup accelerator YCombinator. Altman ran Combinator before joining OpenAI.

For the past seven months, Shear has been a partner at incubator YCombinator, where she advises startups on everything from fundraising strategies to technology approaches.

Shear grew up in Seattle and holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from Yale University. Twitch co-founder Justin Kan said of Shear: a great co-founder. Hard working, never complaining, and the smartest person I know.

People familiar with the matter said Shear was recognized by OpenAI’s board of directors because he recognized the existential threat posed by artificial intelligence. Additionally, as a computer scientist, Shear has spent more than a decade building Twitch into one of the most successful video platforms in the world, so he's well positioned to lead a large engineering group (OpenAI).