Reid Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn, will not run for re-election to Microsoft\u2019s board this year, the company said in a regulatory filing on Friday.<\/p>\n
Mr. Hoffman has been a key figure in forging Microsoft\u2019s relationship with OpenAI, but he also brought challenges. They included financial conflicts with his start-up investments and his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, which lasted until just months<\/a> before the financier and sex offender was arrested a second time.<\/p>\n In a podcast interview<\/a> with Satya Nadella, Microsoft\u2019s chief executive, that was released on Friday morning, Mr. Hoffman called serving on the board \u201ca huge honor and pleasure.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Hoffman, 58, said he would leave the board because a start-up he co-founded was seeing remarkable progress in its efforts to use artificial intelligence to improve cancer treatment. \u201cI should really be transitioning right now to being founder mode,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cYou will definitely be missed on the Microsoft board,\u201d Mr. Nadella said on the podcast.<\/p>\n A spokeswoman for Mr. Hoffman said he was traveling and unable to comment further.<\/p>\n Microsoft\u2019s filing thanked Mr. Hoffman for his service and said his decision \u201cis not as a result of any disagreement with management on any matter relating to the company\u2019s operations, policies or practices.\u201d It said he would serve until the company\u2019s annual meeting, which is typically in December, and declined to comment further.<\/p>\n Mr. Hoffman joined Microsoft\u2019s board in 2017, after it bought LinkedIn for $26.2 billion. He was an early investor in OpenAI, and helped forge its relationship with Microsoft when the start-up was looking for more funding to advance its A.I. development. Mr. Hoffman joined OpenAI\u2019s board of directors in 2018 but stepped down five years later.<\/p>\n Microsoft put $1 billion into OpenAI in 2019, and Mr. Hoffman was there when OpenAI demonstrated its technology to Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, a critical meeting that cemented Microsoft\u2019s further investment and close partnership with the start-up.<\/p>\n In a lawsuit brought against OpenAI and Microsoft in 2024, Elon Musk, who helped found OpenAI but eventually left the A.I. research lab, accused Mr. Hoffman and another Microsoft executive of violating antitrust laws<\/a> because of their involvement with both companies.<\/p>\n Mr. Musk lost the case<\/a> after it went to trial this spring, but he has vowed to appeal. The court did not hear the antitrust claims during the trial, focusing instead on claims against Microsoft, OpenAI and two OpenAI founders: Sam Altman and Greg Brockman.<\/p>\n Mr. Hoffman was also a co-founder of and investor in Inflection AI, another A.I. start-up. He was part of Microsoft\u2019s vetting process<\/a> when the company paid more than $650 million<\/a> two years ago to license Inflection\u2019s technology, hired much of its staff and made an Inflection co-founder, Mustafa Suleyman, a top Microsoft executive.<\/p>\n (The New York Times sued<\/a> OpenAI and Microsoft on claims of copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The companies deny any improper actions.)<\/p>\n Mr. Hoffman\u2019s personal and political entanglements have brought public attention to Microsoft\u2019s typically low-key board. He has been a major Democratic donor and has defended<\/a> his funding of E. Jean Carroll\u2019s sexual-abuse lawsuit against President Trump, which has made him a right-wing target.<\/p>\n And after being introduced to Mr. Epstein by a leader at M.I.T.\u2019s Media Lab, Mr. Hoffman remained in touch with the financier for several years. He visited Mr. Epstein\u2019s island, swapped gifts and at one point told Mr. Epstein that he had been thinking of ways<\/a> to help with negative media attention online, The Times reported<\/a> this year.<\/p>\n He met with Mr. Epstein over Skype and at times updated him on his interactions with Mr. Gates through at least late 2018, documents show. Mr. Epstein was arrested in July 2019.<\/p>\n Mr. Hoffman told The Times this year that he wanted the Trump administration to release all files related to Mr. Epstein and prosecute those responsible for criminal behavior. \u201cI welcome all the work that is being done by the press and those online to look into any and all Epstein connections to expose those who committed crimes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reid Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn, will not run for re-election to Microsoft\u2019s board this year, the company…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64050,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[25,36299,1555,4071,36301,36300,29715,146,15590,157,1588,36302,15591],"class_list":["post-64049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-openai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-boards-of-directors","tag-computers-and-the-internet","tag-epstein","tag-hoffman","tag-jeffrey-e-1953","tag-linkedin-corporation","tag-microsoft-corp","tag-nadella","tag-openai","tag-openai-labs","tag-reid-garrett","tag-satya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}