In December, OpenAI’s revenues surpassed $2bn on an annualised basis, making it one of the fastest-growing technology companies in history.
Madhumita Murgia in London and George Hammond in San Francisco On the morning of November 18, during a tech conference in Tokyo, Ting Cai received a news alert about OpenAI’s Sam Altman, who had been ousted in a boardroom coup. Cai, chief data officer of Japanese tech giant Rakuten, was caught off guard. He had flown back from San Francisco days earlier, where he had recently seen the chief executive of the artificial intelligence pioneer and his team, with whom Rakuten...