Bret Taylor

Bret Taylor was born July 10, 1980, in Oakland, California, and attended Stanford University, earning his bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science in 2002 and 2003. He has been called "the Forrest Gump of Silicon Valley" for his presence at numerous landmark moments in technology history.

Taylor began his career at Google as an associate product manager, where he led the team that created Google Maps. In June 2007, he left Google to join venture capital firm Benchmark Capital as an entrepreneur-in-residence, where he and several former Google employees founded FriendFeed. Taylor was CEO until August 2009, when it was acquired by Facebook for an estimated $50 million, leading to Facebook adopting the "Like" button from FriendFeed. After the acquisition, Taylor joined Facebook and became CTO in 2010.

In 2012, Taylor left Facebook to found Quip, a competitor to Google Docs, which was acquired by Salesforce in 2016. Taylor became chief product officer at Salesforce in 2017, was named president and chief operating officer in 2019, and in November 2021, was named vice chair and co-CEO at Salesforce. As COO, Taylor led Salesforce's acquisition of Slack Technologies, which closed in 2021, and led the creation of a system dubbed Customer 360. On November 30, 2022, it was announced that Taylor would be stepping down as co-CEO and vice chair at Salesforce at the end of January 2023.

Career History

• Co-founder and CEO of Sierra (February 2023–present)
• Board Chair of OpenAI (November 2023–present)
• Vice Chair and Co-CEO of Salesforce (November 2021–January 2023)
• President and Chief Operating Officer of Salesforce (2019–2021)
• Chief Product Officer of Salesforce (2017–2019)
• Chairman of Twitter (2021–October 2022)
• Chief Technology Officer of Facebook (2010–2012)

What Bret Taylor could bring to OpenAI Board Chair: Taylor's appointment to OpenAI's board in November 2023 following the reconstitution of its board after Sam Altman was briefly ousted and reinstated as CEO reflects confidence in his ability to stabilize leadership during crisis. His track record demonstrates expertise in managing high-stakes corporate transitions: he was chairman of Twitter when Elon Musk acquired it for $44 billion, successfully stewarding that complex negotiation. With deep product and engineering credibility from Google, Facebook, and Salesforce, combined with his entrepreneurial foundation of two successful AI-focused startups (FriendFeed and Sierra), Taylor brings both technical acumen and board governance experience critical for OpenAI's mission-driven leadership during its expansion phase.