There could be too-many-cooks in the AI research part of their work.
Also, I don't think Sama thinks like a typical large org managers. OpenAI has enough money to have all sorts of products/labs that are startup like. No reason to standby waiting for the research work.
Altman doesn't think like a typical large org manager because he's never successfully built or run one. He failed upward into this role.
OpenAI doesn't have enough money to even run ChatGPT in perpetuity, so building internal moonshots is an irresponsible waste of investor funds.