I see your point, but I am somewhat skeptical about leaks. I'm open to being convinced about how Sam's leadership played a pivotal role in OpenAI's success, or why finding a suitable replacement might be difficult. Are there specific instances where his decisions clearly influenced the course of events?

Observing from the outside, it feels like the bulk of the credit goes to their AI team and that Sam was just there to make sure the machine was well oiled. Maybe he was really good at that, I don't know. Their productization of models wasn't that great, starting with the name, "ChatGPT". IMO, the real driving force has been the unparalleled capabilities of their models rather than branding or marketing.