Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has stepped down from the OpenAI Foundation’s board, marking another shake-up in the aftermath of leaked emails revealing he once sought personal advice from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Summers confirmed his exit in a statement, saying that as he moves back from public roles, he’s also choosing to leave the OpenAI board. He added that he appreciated the chance to contribute to the organization, praised its potential, and said he’ll be watching its future closely.
Summers, a fixture of Democratic policy and economic circles, is a longtime Washington insider who was brought onto the board of the nonprofit that runs OpenAI after a highly public boardroom coup that briefly saw the ouster of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. At the time, Summers was viewed as a stabilizing force, a consummate insider who would help the controversial startup navigate complex political, corporate and academic networks that would be instrumental to its success.
In a statement, the members of OpenAI’s board said that “we respect his decision. We appreciate his many contributions and the perspective he brought to the Board.”
Severing ties with OpenAI — a startup that’s worth an estimated $750 billion and a key player in an artificial intelligence ecosystem that’s now a major economic force — is indicative of how quickly Summers has fallen out of favor.
The former Treasury Secretary announced earlier this week that he would be stepping back from public commitments as backlash mounted over his relationship with Epstein, who killed himself while in custody in 2019 on sex trafficking charges. Summers, who served as president of Harvard University and is now a tenured professor at the institution, had maintained close ties to the disgraced financier well after Epstein was convicted on sex charges in 2008.
Those revelations elicited immediate rebukes from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and academics who’d repeatedly clashed with Summers, who maintained a reputation for sharp elbows as a longtime economic and political adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
In emails released by House Republicans last week, Epstein referred to himself as the “wing man” for Summers. In one exchange, the former Treasury Summers asked for Epstein’s input on how to navigate a potential romantic relationship with a mentee. In another, Summers suggested women in aggregate have lower IQ than men.
The revelation of those emails — which has occurred amid a broad reckoning of the bonds Epstein had managed to maintain across a galaxy of political, business and academic elites — forced Summers to step back from high-profile roles across several organizations. Since Monday evening, Summers has stepped down from roles at the Center for American Progress, Bloomberg News, the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project and the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The New York Times said it would not renew his contract as a contributor.
Summers has said that he will continue to teach. Late Tuesday, the Harvard Crimson reported that the university had opened an investigation into Epstein’s links to Summers and other Harvard affiliates.