There's a financial incentive. And there will be more opportunity for funding if you jump ship as well (it seems like OpenAI will have difficulty with investors after this).

But also, if you're a cutting edge researcher, do you want to stay at a company that just ousted the CEO because they thought the speed of technology was going too fast (it's sounded like this might be the reason)? You don't want to be shackled when by the organization becoming a new MIRI.

It seems that MS spent 10 billion to become a minority shareholder in company controlled by a non-profit. They were warned, or maybe even Sam oversold the potential profitability of the investment.

Just as another perspective.

being a lowly millionaire doesn’t get you much these days. almost certainly anyone who was hired into a mid level or senior role was probably already at least a millionaire

Salaries at openai already make them millionaires.

All this talk of a new venture and more money makes this smell highly fishy to me. Take this with a grain of salt, it's a random thought.

It's created huge noise and hype and controversy, and shaken things up to make people "think" they can be in on the next AI hype train "if only" they join whatever Sam Altman does now. Riding the next wave kind of thing because you have FOMO and didn't get in on the first wave.

Money = building boring enterprise products, not building AI gods I would suspect

OpenAI was building boring enterprise and developer products.

Which likely most of the company was working on.

OpenAI was building boring enterprise and developer products under Sam Altman's leadership

And that could be a core problem. He wasn't really free to decide the speed of development. He wanted to change that and deliver faster. Obviously, they achieved something in the past weeks, so doomers pulled the plug to stop him.

If you're looking for money you probably chose wrong going with a non-profit.