Former Policy Boss At X, Nick Pickles, Joins Sam Altman Venture

A senior executive who had suddenly resigned from Elon Musk’s X platform, has announced he is joining a venture of Musk rival Sam Altman.

In September X’s global affairs head Nick Pickles had announced that after ten year at the firm formerly known as Twitter, he was leaving the platform.

There was no immediate reason given for the Pickles resignation, but it came after X’s head of business operations, Joe Benarroch, had left X in June 2024, after only joining X in June 2023.

Twitter departure

In his resignation tweet in September, Nick Pickles had explained he had “made the decision to leave several months ago”, but was working with CEO Linda Yaccarino through the transition.

Pickles did not provide any hint to his future plans, and it was notable that Linda Yaccarino did not appear to publicly acknowledge or even thank Nick Pickles for his decade of service at Twitter.

Nick Pickles has not posted anything to his X account since his resignation, but his profile has now been updated to state that he is now the chief policy officer at Sam Altman’s Tools for Humanity, the firm building the technology to support World Network (formerly Worldcoin).

Nick Pickles also told Reuters on Wednesday that he will serve as chief policy officer for Sam Altman’s Tools for Humanity.

Alex Blania and Sam Altman are the two co-inventors of Worldcoin which recently rebranded as “World Network”, or just “World.”

Musk rival

Sam Altman and Elon Musk had at one stage been colleagues when OpenAI was founded in 2015, and Musk was part of the AI startup – serving as an initial board member.

But the two men have since fallen out.

In 2018 Musk resigned from the OpenAI board and no longer has anything to do with the AI pioneer.

Musk also launched an AI startup called xAI to challenge OpenAI’s ChatGPT with a ‘pro-humanity’ alternative offering.

Musk also sued OpenAI and Sam Altman, after he filed an original lawsuit in March but withdrew it without explanation in June, a day before a judge was due to rule on OpenAI’s request for it to be dismissed.

Musk in August then filed “a more forceful” lawsuit against ChatGPT developer.

Nick Pickles

Pickles had joined Twitter (as it was then) in 2014 in the London office, and had played a prominent role in the following years.

In January 2021 for example Pickles appeared before British MPs and was questioned over Twitter’s policy on hate content and the role of social media platforms.

That came soon after supporters of then President Donald Trump had stormed into the Capitol building on Wednesday 6 January 2021 in an attempted insurrection, which left five people dead, including a police officer, with hundreds more injured.

Pickles had remained at Twitter in the chaos and turmoil of Elon Musk’s controversial takeover, which saw Musk dissolve its board of directors and fire senior management, which in turn prompted a mass exodus of executives.

In the mass culling of executives, Dublin-based Sinead McSweeney, global vice president for public policy (responsible for interacting with lawmakers and civil society on issues including free speech, privacy and online safety) had left the firm, and Nick Pickles took over McSweeney’s role.

Pickles had been a senior director for global public policy strategy, but was appointed the Vice President of Global Affairs for X in 2023.

Pickles was also reportedly X’s spokesperson in battles with multiple governments, including Musk’s infamous spat with Brazil.