Bayo Ogunlesi, Chairman of Global Infrastructure Partners, during a strategy and policy discussion with CEOs at the State Department Library in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on April 11, 2017 in Washington, DC. Listen to US President Donald Trump’s speech.
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OpenAI said on Tuesday that senior managing director Adebayo Ogunlesi BlackRockis joining the startup’s board of directors, the latest announcement as the company moves toward a for-profit structure.
Ogunlesi is a founding partner of Global Infrastructure Partners, an infrastructure investment firm acquired by BlackRock for $12 billion last year. Before helping to found GIP in 2006, Ogunlesi spent 23 years at Credit Suisse.
“The rapid advancement and development of artificial intelligence provides a unique opportunity to build a better future,” Ogunlesi said in OpenAI’s announcement on Tuesday. “As part of this, thoughtful strategies and infrastructure investments will be the key to unlocking AI’s full potential and The key to leveraging its strengths responsibly. I am excited to contribute to this work and look forward to serving on the OpenAI Board of Directors.”
For OpenAI, Ogunlesi’s addition to the board marks another step in its dramatic transformation into a for-profit company. The board has been almost completely revamped since late 2023, when Chief Executive Sam Altman was abruptly ousted and then quickly reinstated.
previous salesperson Co-CEO Bret Taylor, who served as chairman of Twitter before it was acquired by Elon Musk, became chairman of OpenAI in November 2023 after Altman’s ordeal. Secretary Larry Summers joined at the same time. Last year, the board of directors added several new faces, including Instant shopping cart CEO Fidji Simo and Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (now known as the Gates Foundation).
OpenAI, a non-profit organization founded in 2015, said in late December last year that it would create a public benefit corporation to oversee commercial operations and remove some non-profit organization restrictions to make it operate more like a high-growth startup.
Last year, OpenAI continued to launch updated large-scale language models and new tools after launching a generative artificial intelligence boom in late 2022, with a valuation reaching $157 billion.
The company said that by transforming into the People’s Bank of Delaware “by holding common stock,” it would be able to conduct commercial operations while employing a separate employee for its nonprofit division and allow the division to conduct health care, education and science philanthropic activities in the field.
Musk, one of the co-founders of OpenAI, is filing a lawsuit in an attempt to prevent OpenAI from transforming into an entirely for-profit company.
Ogunlesi’s other board positions include BlackRock, Topgolf Callaway Brands, Kosmos Energy Holdings and Terminal Investment Ltd.
—CNBC’s Hayden Field contributed to this report.
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