3 Reasons Why OpenAI Appointed Bayo Ogunlesi to Its Board

Yesterday, Open AI announced the appointment of Adebayo Ogunlesi to its board. The announcement has been greeted with accolades and optimism. However, the reason why this appointment was made is not obvious, beyond the general and formal statements put out by OpenAI.

According to Harvard Business Review, companies appoint boards for a number of reasons which include; performance management and monitoring, strategic guidance, oversight and accountability, stakeholder representation and access to expertise and networks. But these reasons are still broad and not specific enough.

We have identified 3 reasons why OpenAI appointed Adebayo Ogunlesi to its board. This was done by reviewing his experience and strategic events in the AGI race. However, it is important to start with OpenAI’s statement. after which other factors are discussed.

OpenAI’s Statement

In their announcement, Open AI stated; “We’re pleased to announce Adebayo “Bayo” Ogunlesi has joined our Board of Directors. As Founding Partner, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), one of the world’s premier infrastructure investing platforms, and a Senior Managing Director at BlackRock, Mr. Ogunlesi brings deep leadership experience and expertise across corporate finance, infrastructure investment and global market strategy. This appointment further complements the Board’s depth across technical, AI safety, cybersecurity, regulatory, economic, nonprofit and governance domains, strengthening its ability to oversee the company’s progress toward AGI”.

Adebayo Ogunlesi: Credentials

Ogunlesi joined Blackrock Inc as Senior Managing Director and board member after the $12billion acquisition of his company- Global Infrastructure Partners in 2024. Ogunlesi is now worth $2.3 billion.
Adebayo Ogunlesi founded Global Infrastructure Partners, when he left Credit Suisse; an investment bank, where he worked for over 23 years, and rose to the positions of Executive Vice President and Chief Client Officer of Investment Banking.

According to the website of GIP, from 2002 to 2004, he was Head of the Global Investment Banking Division and a Member of the Executive Board and Management Committee of Credit Suisse.
“Mr. Ogunlesi was an attorney with the New York law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore. He also served as a Law Clerk to the Honorable Thurgood Marshall, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He also lectured at the Harvard and Yale Law Schools and the Yale School of Management where he taught courses on transnational investment projects”.

His educational credentials include a B.A. (First Class Honors) in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Oxford University, a J.D. (magna cum laude) from Harvard Law School and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. He was previously the Lead Director of Goldman Sachs Group. He is a Member of the Dean’s Advisory Boards of the Harvard Law and Business Schools and the Harvard University Global Advisory Council.

He also serves on other boards such as Topgolf Callaway Brands, Kosmos Energy Holdings, and Terminal Investment Ltd.

What We Make of Ogunlesi’s Credentials

Adebayo Ogunlesi has worked and advised at top levels in global finance, infrastructure, energy and manufacturing. His extensive experience in making infrastructure deals, and his legal expertise in such realms, particularly, will help OpenAI realize its ambition to dominate the AGI race. How is this so? The answer to this question, below, will explain why OpenAI appointed Adebayo Ogunlesi to its board.
Reasons Why OpenAI Appointed Adebayo Ogunlesi to Its Board

1. Capital

According to TechCrunch OpenAI spent $100 million to train GPT-4, at some point, it was spending $700,000 to run ChatGPT daily. So far, it has spent $7billion to train its models and $1.5 billion to recruit staff.

OpenAI has 250 million users, 10 million of which are paying users. Its annualized revenues have been estimated to be $2.7 billion in 2024.

The success recorded in monetizing its models regardless, competitors such as xAI, Anthropic, Cohere and Mistral are around the corner. xAI particularly raised $6.6 billion at a lower valuation to OpenAI’s valuation. Both Cohere and Mistral have raised around $1billion.

In order to retain its leadership, OpenAI seeks to increase compute power. This requires long term investment in infrastructure and talent acquisition. Thus, OpenAI raised $6.6billion in October, 2024 at a valuation of $157billion, with projects that its revenues will reach a high of $100billion in 2029. This means OpenAI has raised a total of $17.9billion since inception.

Its investors in this last round include; Thrive, Microsoft, Nvidia, SoftBank, Khosla Ventures, Altimeter Capital, Fidelity and MGX.

But this capital is just not enough, Sam Altman has one grand hurdle to face, just like other tech giants such as Google and Facebook making a big bet on Artificial General Intelligence. That hurdle is electricity, a lot of it. Guess you guessed right. Let’s talk about OpenAI’s electricity ambition.

2. Electricity

According to the New York Times, OpenAI aims to build 5 Gigawatt data centre’s. He intends to build 7 of these types, with one costing $100 billion. This sounds outrageous initially, then it sounds ridiculous. Each of these futuristic data centers will contain 2 million AI chips, and that is why the power needs are huge.

One 5GW data centre will consume the power that the entire city of Miami consumes. 7 data centre’s of this magnitude will consume double the power that the State of New York consumes.

But OpenAI is not alone on the electricity quest, Google has announced a plan to build two $3.3billion data centre’s in South Carolina. Meta announced its plans to build nuclear reactors for the same purpose.
The race to AGI is an interesting one that springs surprises at intervals and at every milestone.

The athletes (Google, Meta and Facebook) are probably astounded at the never ending hurdles on the road to AGI. The first hurdle was the quality of their language models, now it is electricity.

In the case of OpenAI, it does not want to lose its leadership, but where will the capital for electricity development come from? Maybe that is the wrong question. The right question will be,” how does it develop the knowledge to develop infrastructure? The answer is Bayo Ogunlesi. Who can do it better? Ogunlesi is the man for the job, and no appointment would have been more auspicious. A cursory look at the website of Global Infrastructure Partners shows the depth of expertise in energy projects.

When you match Ogunlesi’s expertise in energy projects and his affiliation with BlackRock, there is no second saying that he is the best candidate to help OpenAI navigate the electricity phase of the AGI race. He will be in the best position to advise on structuring of deals and raising of debt financing for this phase of the race.

3. The BlackRock Connection

BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager, with about $11.8 trillion assets under management. Bayo Ogunlesi’s presence on the OpenAI board and his role on BlackRock’s board makes him a good addition to the OpenAI board which has been going through some shuffles since the boardroom coup that saw Sam Altman lose his seat in November, 2023. According to Fast Company, OpenAI has since added Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and a board-certified oncologist; Nicole Seligman, former EVP and global general counsel of Sony; and Fidji Simo, CEO and chair of Instacart to its board. While these additions appear statutory and reflective of diversity, they appear to bolster OpenAI’s chances for regulatory and compliance challenges.

Ogunlesi on the other hand stands out in his value for his deal making experience in energy megaprojects and his affiliation to BlackRock.

BlackRock operates an AI Lab whose mission according to its website is to help solve challenging problems throughout the firm, supporting BlackRock’s mission and improving client outcomes. It also launched a $30 billion fund for AI infrastructure with Microsoft.

OpenAI made a great decision with this one. Let us watch how the AGI race unfolds.