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 had been collaborating on a new AI business platform.
Straight away, the Japanese executive was reassured by OpenAI’s senior management that there had been no wrongdoing on Altman’s part, and Rakuten decided to keep faith in its partnership with OpenAI. Three days later, Altman was reinstated, under a new board. “It was difficult times for them, but our bond and relationship is even stronger,” Cai says.