A Walmart spokeswoman said the company’s focus has always been on developing generative-AI tools that are compatible with many large language models. Other companies worked quickly to make sure they were sheltered from potential fallout. Doug Merritt, the CEO of cloud networking company Aviatrix, was at a private event with former OpenAI board member Reid Hoffman when the Altman news came out. Merritt immediately checked with his tech teams that his company’s AI tools weren’t OpenAI-dependent. Although his company uses OpenAI’s tech for some features, it also relies on other companies’ models. “We’re still using ChatGPT,” Merritt said. “But I feel more comfortable that we haven’t proprietarily tied ourselves to it.”