Michael Browning

Working on AI Agents as a Cofounder at Soaring Titan. Cofounder/CEO @onovative until acquisition.

[Michael Browning @mbrowning]

This will be remembered as a moment. No doubt we are in takeoff.

[jack @jack]

we're making @blocks smaller today. here's my note to the company.

####

today we're making one of the hardest decisions in the history of our company: we're reducing our organization by nearly half, from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000. that means over 4,000 of you are being asked to leave or entering into consultation. i'll be straight about what's happening, why, and what it means for everyone.

first off, if you're one of the people affected, you'll receive your salary for 20 weeks + 1 week per year of tenure, equity vested through the end of may, 6 months of health care, your corporate devices, and $5,000 to put toward whatever you need to help you in this transition (if you’re outside the U.S. you’ll receive similar support but exact details are going to vary based on local requirements). i want you to know that before anything else. everyone will be notified today, whether you're being asked to leave, entering consultation, or asked to stay.

we're not making this decision because we're in trouble. our business is strong. gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving. but something has changed. we're already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. and that's accelerating rapidly.

i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. i chose the latter. repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead. i'd rather take a hard, clear action now and build from a position we believe in than manage a slow reduction of people toward the same outcome. a smaller company also gives us the space to grow our business the right way, on our own terms, instead of constantly reacting to market pressures.

a decision at this scale carries risk. but so does standing still. we've done a full review to determine the roles and people we require to reliably grow the business from here, and we've pressure-tested those decisions from multiple angles. i accept that we may have gotten some of them wrong, and we've built in flexibility to account for that, and do the right thing for our customers.

we're not going to just disappear people from slack and email and pretend they were never here. communication channels will stay open through thursday evening (pacific) so everyone can say goodbye properly, and share whatever you wish. i'll also be hosting a live video session to thank everyone at 3:35pm pacific. i know doing it this way might feel awkward. i'd rather it feel awkward and human than efficient and cold.

to those of you leaving…i’m grateful for you, and i’m sorry to put you through this. you built what this company is today. that's a fact that i'll honor forever. this decision is not a reflection of what you contributed. you will be a great contributor to any organization going forward.

to those staying…i made this decision, and i'll own it. what i'm asking of you is to build with me. we're going to build this company with intelligence at the core of everything we do. how we work, how we create, how we serve our customers. our customers will feel this shift too, and we're going to help them navigate it: towards a future where they can build their own features directly, composed of our capabilities and served through our interfaces. that's what i'm focused on now. expect a note from me tomorrow.

jack

[Michael Browning @mbrowning]

@thsottiaux I’ve been working with the models for years now. It really does feel like a takeoff. It’s like accelerating in an already fast sports car…then the turbo kicks in.

[Michael Browning @mbrowning]

@flappyairplanes Congratulations! The joy of clicking on the “stealth” hyperlink on your website is crushed when clicking on the hyperlink for “metaphor”. It should make the physics of the sky on the background briefly change or the stars/clouds align.

[Michael Browning @mbrowning]

@iyoushetwt @grok @grok which of these individuals are actually entrepreneurs according to the definition of the term.

[Michael Browning @mbrowning]

Codex usage.

[Michael Browning @mbrowning]

I measure the confidence of an AI lab by their respect for a properly scaled y-axis. Bearish on Anthropic. Bullish on Google and OpenAI.

[Michael Browning @mbrowning]

@OpenAIDevs How many credits are included to those that subscribe to a Pro plan?

[Michael Browning @mbrowning]

@benhylak Maturity and relentlessness are not mutually exclusive.

[Michael Browning @mbrowning]

@OpenAIDevs Thanks for another great DevDay. Is there any sort of ongoing forum where attendees can interact? Maybe a Discord or Slack? It is a great group of people that I would love to be able to interact with on an ongoing basis. Thanks!

[Michael Browning @mbrowning]

@gdb It was a fun way to close out a great day of new releases. I hope entire OpenAI team is proud of their work. See you next year!

[Michael Browning @mbrowning]

Getting ready to attend my 2nd OpenAI DevDay. Last year’s event was one of the most intellectually stimulating days of my life. The content was great. But, it was the opportunity to have deep conversations with OpenAI engineers and researchers that took it to another level. I’ve never had so many mentally engaging conversations in one day. @OpenAIDevs #OpenAIDevDay

[Michael Browning @mbrowning]

@jaltma @sama It’s like thinking you are getting ready to meet Jack Altman, but then you walk into the room and it’s Sam Altman. 😜

[Michael Browning @mbrowning]

@jasonfried The audiobook data is really interesting here. I have loved them for decades. I still sometimes want a companion hard copy or kindle version for books like REWORK that I reference often.

[Michael Browning @mbrowning]

@j_mcgraph @michpokrass She is absolutely one of my favorite team members to hear speak on a subject. Hopefully she will have another session at DevDay this year.

[Michael Browning @mbrowning]

My experience with @waymo was amazing. I was in San Francisco for the Open AI dev day conference. I heard some people at the conference talking about how they use it. So I tried it once, a second time, and then never used anything but Waymo until I left the city. It’s extraordinary.

[Michael Browning @mbrowning]

@bobmcgrewai I appreciate your perspective on this issue. Any thoughts on what makes a good moat when AI agents are highly performant?

[Michael Browning @mbrowning]

@michpokrass We just ran a 45 minute agentic job involving 3 agents, 31 tasks, and a mix of 4.1 for research and o4-mini for analysis. Perfect use of tools throughout. Instruction following and tool use are both fantastic with these new releases. Nice work @OpenAIDevs

[Michael Browning @mbrowning]

@sama Renaissance art changed how we saw ourselves. AI has already started to do that.

[Michael Browning @mbrowning]

@stevendcoffey Any tips for new users that have been using similar tools for a while? Advice on getting high quality responses?

[Michael Browning @mbrowning]

@stevenheidel Awesome. Any tips or routines that you have found to be useful? With other tools I have found great success in having it create docs, then reminding it to read those docs when implementing code.