Bret Taylor

Bret Taylor is a software executive who has chaired the board of OpenAI since November 2023. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer science from Stanford University.¹²

Career

According to the proxy statement Twitter filed in April 2022, Taylor was a group product manager at Google before June 2007, where he "co-created Google Maps and the Google Maps API." From June to September 2007 he was an entrepreneur-in-residence at the venture firm Benchmark, where he cofounded FriendFeed, a social network he ran as chief executive from October 2007 to August 2009. He was chief technology officer of Facebook from August 2009 to July 2012, then cofounded the productivity-software company Quip, which Salesforce acquired.² Salesforce's proxy statement of the same month gave his Quip tenure as chief executive from September 2012 to August 2016 and as president of Quip within Salesforce from August 2016 to November 2017; Twitter's gave it as chief executive through November 2017. At Salesforce he was president and chief product officer from November 2017, president and chief operating officer from December 2019, and vice chair and co-chief executive from November 2021. The Salesforce statement gave his age as 41.²³

Taylor joined Twitter's board in July 2016 and became its independent board chair in November 2021. From June 2014 to June 2019 he was a director of Axon Enterprise, "formerly known as TASER International," which the Twitter statement described as "a protection technologies company."²³

OpenAI

After OpenAI's board removed Sam Altman as chief executive on November 17, 2023, Altman returned on November 29 with "a new initial board" of Taylor as chair, Larry Summers and Adam D'Angelo. Altman thanked "Will Hurd, Brian Chesky, Bret Taylor and Larry Summers" for having "put their lives on hold" to support the company. In his own message to staff Taylor wrote that the board was "thrilled that Sam, Mira and Greg are back together leading the company," that it would include "a non-voting observer for Microsoft," and that it would convene "an independent committee of the Board to oversee a review of the recent events." On December 8, 2023, he announced that the committee, consisting of himself and Summers, had selected Anjan Sahni and Hallie B. Levin of WilmerHale to conduct the review.¹

On March 8, 2024, the special committee announced that the review was complete and that the board expressed "full confidence" in Altman and Greg Brockman. "We have unanimously concluded that Sam and Greg are the right leaders for OpenAI," Taylor stated. The WilmerHale summary found that the prior board's decision "did not arise out of concerns regarding product safety or security, the pace of development, OpenAI's finances, or its statements to investors, customers, or business partners," and that Altman's "conduct did not mandate removal." The board added Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former chief executive of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Nicole Seligman, formerly of Sony, and Fidji Simo of Instacart, and Altman rejoined it.⁴ Reporting in May 2024 on an account of the removal given by the former director Helen Toner, CNBC quoted Taylor as saying the review had found "a significant breakdown of trust between the prior board and Sam and Greg."⁵

On September 9, 2026, the OpenAI Foundation, the nonprofit controlling OpenAI Group PBC, appointed Paul Christiano, then a senior technical advisor at the federal Center for AI Standards and Innovation, to its board. Taylor, as board chair, said Christiano's "experience working on frontier AI safety and standards in government" would strengthen its oversight.⁶