$157bn OpenAI Research Lab Adds Nigerian-born Adebayo Ogunlesi to Board of Directors

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

OpenAI, a research lab that develops artificial intelligence to benefit humanity, said yesterday that Nigerian-born billionaire businessman, Adebayo Ogunlesi, a Senior Managing Director at BlackRock was  joining its board, the company’s latest move in its push toward a for-profit structure.

Aside from BlackRock valued at $11.475 trillion, Ogunlesi’s other board positions include: Topgolf Callaway Brands, Kosmos Energy Holdings and Terminal Investment Ltd.

The private equity investor is a founding partner of Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), an infrastructure investing firm that was acquired by BlackRock last year for $12 billion. Before helping to start GIP in 2006, Ogunlesi spent 23 years at Credit Suisse.

“The rapid advancement and development of AI offers a unique opportunity to build a better future,” Ogunlesi said in OpenAI’s announcement Tuesday.

“As part of this, thoughtful strategies and investment in infrastructure will be key to unlocking AI’s full potential and delivering its benefits responsibly. I’m excited to contribute to this effort and look forward to being a part of the OpenAI Board,” he added.

For OpenAI, the addition of Ogunlesi to its board marks another step in its dramatic transformation to a for-profit company. The board has been almost entirely revamped since late 2023, when Chief Executive, Sam Altman, was abruptly ousted before being quickly reinstated.

Former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor, who was chairman at Twitter before its purchase by Elon Musk, became chair of OpenAI after the Altman ordeal in November 2023. Larry Summers, a former Treasury secretary, joined at the same time.

Last year, the board added several new faces including Instacart CEO Fidji Simo and Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, now known as the Gates Foundation.

OpenAI, which was founded as a non-profit in 2015, said in late December that it will create a public benefit corporation to oversee commercial operations, removing some of its non-profit restrictions and allowing it to function more like a high-growth startup.

Last year, OpenAI was valued at $157 billion as it continued rolling out updated large language models and new tools after kicking off the generative artificial intelligence boom in late 2022, CNBC reported.

The company said that by transforming into a Delaware PBC “with ordinary shares of stock,” it can pursue commercial operations while separately hiring a staff for its non-profit arm and allowing that wing to take on charitable activities in health care, education and science, OpenAI said in December.

Musk, one of OpenAI’s co-founders is suing to try and stop OpenAI from converting into a full for-profit business.

President Bola Tinubu, in March last year, met with Ogunlesi in Abuja in his drive to attract Foreign Direct Investment (FID) to the country.

Ogunlesi hails from Makun, Sagamu, Ogun State, Nigeria. He is the son of Theophilus Ogunlesi, the first Nigerian professor of medicine at the University of Ibadan. He went to King’s College, Lagos and received a B.A. with first class honours in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford University in England.

In 1979, Ogunlesi received a JD–MBA from Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School. During his time at Harvard, he was on the Harvard Law Review. He has been married to British-born optometrist Dr. Amelia Quist-Ogunlesi since 1985, according to THISDAY checks.

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