[jjeaff]

There is an immediate conflict of interest. Because one should immediately start to wonder if Sam is holding back the company from making their own chips or perhaps avoiding partnering with another supplier because he wants to funnel future business to his future side project. That may be in the best interest of the non-profit, but it may not be, we can't tell, because of the conflict of interest.

[jaybrendansmith]

I'm sorry but I have to disagree. There are very few other suppliers. We see it with Apple and ARM...without this vertical integration the M2 laptop upon which I write this post would not exist. When one is running a company, the biggest enemy is always time. Had Apple not planned the ARM move more than a decade ago, it would not have happened in time to revamp the mac lineup. What you see as a conflict I see as making good bets and moving the ball forward. Given more recent events, its abundantly clear that the board was out of touch. Letting OpenAI fall behind would have caused it to fail in its mission of safe AGI. When making these judgments, its always necessary to consider the alternative timelines that would inevitably occur.