Silicon Valley Investors Sit on Boards of Competing AI Companies, Raising Conflict Concerns
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Several powerful Silicon Valley investors sit on boards of companies that compete with their own AI investments, including Reid Hoffman (Microsoft vs Greylock's Inflection AI and Tome), Marc Andreessen (Meta vs a16z's OpenAI, Mistral, Character AI investments), and John Doerr (Alphabet vs Kleiner Perkins' Together AI investment).
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These competitive conflicts of interest violate basic corporate governance principles, but they aren't illegal since US antitrust law only forbids interlocking directorates between public companies.
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Typically boards allow members to retain conflicted roles as long as the conflicts are disclosed, though experts argue AI competitiveness can't be "mitigated with recusal."
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Shareholders rarely hold Silicon Valley boards accountable for such competitive conflicts, partly because proxy statement disclosures focus narrowly on SEC requirements concerning financial conflicts of interest.
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The conflicts illustrate Silicon Valley's embrace of interconnectedness and diffusion of knowledge between companies, but also raise monopoly and bubble risks if unchecked.