On May 8, according to Business Insider, when the OpenAI board of directors briefly dismissed CEO Sam Altman in 2023, former live broadcast platform Twitch CEO Emmett Shear was appointed as interim CEO. But just 72 hours later, Altman returned as OpenAI CEO.


Figure 1: Hill briefly served as OpenAI CEO

Now, Elon Musk Musk's lawsuit against Altman once again thrust Hill into the spotlight. The lawsuit disclosed text message exchanges between Mira Murati, then OpenAI’s chief technology officer, and Altman.

When Mulaty learned that Hill had been named interim CEO, she texted Altman: "The new guy is a nobody from Twitch."

"Emmett?" Altman replied.

“Yes,” Murati wrote.


Fig. 2: Mulati calls Hill a nobody

The text message conversation went viral on X, spawning a slew of memes on Wednesday. One user wrote that Hill was "shot while lying down." Another user said it was "not very hurtful, but very insulting."

Hill now serves as the CEO of Softmax. He first laughed at himself and briefly changed the background image of his X homepage to a screenshot of Mulati’s text message. As of 10 a.m. local time on Thursday, he changed the background image to a picture related to the liquid crystal phase (to show professionalism).

"Just to be used as a joke by you is already a great honor." Hill said on X.


Figure 3: Hill’s X back The picture was replaced with a text message screenshot

Musk replied with a fire emoji and a laughing and crying emoji, suggesting that he fought back beautifully.


Figure 4 : Musk's response

Although Mulati may think Hill is a "passer-by", he is actually a backbone of Silicon Valley. The startup he founded, Kiko, received Y Combinator investment in 2005 and was later sold to eBay.

Hill later co-founded Justin.tv, a website that broadcasts Justin Kan's daily life. The platform later allowed other users to live-stream their lives and launched a gaming-themed spin-off platform, Twitch.tv. Hill led the company through its rebranding to Twitch and its sale to Amazon for $970 million.

LinkedIn information shows that Shia has been active in the Y Combinator circle and serves as a part-time and visiting partner from time to time. Altman, whom he briefly replaced, was previously the president of Y Combinator. Hill's latest entrepreneurial project, Softmax, is a startup company in the field of "AI alignment".

As of press time, Hill had not responded to a request for comment.