Co-founder of Twitch and briefly interim CEO of OpenAI during the November 2023 board crisis. Partner at Y Combinator and active AI investor. Known for candid public thinking on AI risk and governance.
Shear's 72 hours as OpenAI's interim CEO gave him something no amount of AI commentary could: direct, firsthand knowledge of what actually happened inside the most consequential corporate governance crisis in AI history. He took the job because he genuinely cares about existential risk — a rarity among tech executives who usually treat safety as PR — and his willingness to speak publicly about what he learned makes him one of the most credible independent voices on AI lab governance. As a YC partner, he's now in position to shape how the next generation of AI startups thinks about safety from day one.
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