Larry Summers resigns from OpenAI board after Epstein emails

(Reuters) - Former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has resigned from the OpenAI board, he said on Wednesday, several days after Congress released documents that showed Summers shared a close relationship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Summers, also a former president of Harvard University, said on Monday he would step back from all public commitments, adding that the move was to allow him "to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me."

Separately, Harvard University will open a new probe into Summers' connections with Epstein, the University's newspaper reported on Tuesday.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment.

The Republican-controlled U.S. Congress voted almost unanimously on Tuesday to force the release of DOJ files on Epstein, an outcome Trump had fought for months before ending his opposition.

The Epstein scandal has been a political thorn in Trump's side for months, partly because he amplified conspiracy theories about Epstein to his own supporters.

Many Trump voters believe his administration has covered up Epstein's ties to powerful figures and obscured details surrounding his death, which was ruled a suicide, in a Manhattan jail in 2019.

Summers, a Democrat, served as former President Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary and former President Barack Obama's National Economic Council director.

He has served on the OpenAI board since late 2023, following the brief ouster of the ChatGPT maker's CEO Sam Altman.

Other prominent companies with ties to Summers include edu-tech firm Skillsoft, where he has been a board member since 2021, and Santander, where he chairs the bank's international advisory board.