Full Story Returning of Sam Altman As CEO of OpenAI

The creator of ChatGPT, the amazing chatbot, aimed to create artificial intelligence (AI) that’s smarter than humans in a safe way. However, this mission seemed to be at risk on Friday when the non-profit board of directors at OpenAI fired Altman, the person in charge. They said he had not been truthful in his communication with them. This made a lot of people worried, thinking that not only the future of AI but also humanity was at stake. Then, late on Tuesday night, after three different CEOs and a strong push from Microsoft, the board decided to give Altman his old job back.

Altman coming back was the result of a lot of talking and arguing within the company, pressure from Microsoft, OpenAI’s major investor, and a serious threat from almost all of OpenAI’s employees who said they’d quit if he wasn’t brought back.

Altman and Greg Brockman, the company’s president, won’t be back on the decision-making board right away. Ilya Sutskever, who told Altman he was fired, is said to be leaving the board but staying with the company. The new board chair is Bret Taylor, the former co-CEO of Salesforce. Other members include Larry Summers, the ex-Treasury Secretary, and Adam D’Angelo, the Quora CEO and the only one left from the board that fired Altman. It’s not clear if more members will be added after more talks. Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, called the changes to the board a “first essential step on a path to more stable, well-informed, and effective governance.”

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment

As part of the agreement, it seems OpenAI will keep its legal setup: a company with capped profits overseen by a non-profit board. This board can legally make decisions that might not match up with what the investors want. This unique arrangement let the board surprise everyone with their decision without telling Microsoft, which had put over $11 billion into the company. Altman set up this structure in 2019 to help OpenAI get more money while trying to reduce the worries about companies having too much control over artificial intelligence and its impact on humanity.

Here’s a recap of OpenAI’s rollercoaster week.

The whole issue at OpenAI started last Friday. Altman was on a video call with the board, but Brockman wasn’t there. Sutskever told Altman he was fired and that the news would be made public soon, as mentioned in a tweet by Brockman. Shortly after, Sutskever told Brockman that he was also getting taken off the board but could still stay with the company if he wanted.

After that, OpenAI put up a blog post on their website talking about the firing. The post said, “Mr. Altman is leaving after a careful review by the board. They found that he wasn’t always honest in his communications with them, making it hard for them to do their job. The board doesn’t trust him to lead OpenAI anymore.” The board mentioned that they’ve made Mira Murati, the chief technology officer, the interim CEO.

As people started wondering what the board meant by “not consistently candid in his communications,” the board didn’t give any more details on how or why they made the decision. Brockman shared on Twitter that he was quitting the company in protest of the board firing Altman. This move caused a lot of OpenAI employees to feel upset with the board, and a big part of the tech discussions on X, previously known as Twitter, also shifted against the board.

Investors were pretty mad too. Microsoft apparently got the news about Altman getting fired just a minute before it was posted on the blog. Nadella, the head of Microsoft, immediately started working to get Altman back in the company. Other investors like Thrive Capital, Khosla Ventures, and Tiger Global Management also supported bringing Altman back, as reported by Bloomberg.

On Saturday, while a bunch of OpenAI employees gathered for discussions at Altman’s house in San Francisco, there was news going around that Altman and Brockman were already presenting a new AI company to potential investors.

While discussions to bring back Altman and Brockman were ongoing on Sunday at OpenAI’s offices in San Francisco, they seemed to reach a deadlock. Late on Sunday night, the board announced that Emmett Shear, the former CEO of Twitch, would be the new CEO of OpenAI, taking over from Murati, who was an ally of Altman. Following that, Nadella revealed that Microsoft would hire Altman, Brockman, and other OpenAI staff to form a new independent AI unit within Microsoft, with Altman as the CEO.

Over the weekend, OpenAI employees had rallied together on X, expressing strong support for Altman and Brockman. They started tweeting a shared message indicating they might all leave together: “OpenAI is nothing without its people.” On Monday, around 700 out of the roughly 800 employees penned an open letter, urging the board to step down and hinting at the possibility of joining Microsoft. Following this, Microsoft raised the stakes by declaring they would provide any OpenAI employee interested in joining roles within their unit with comparable compensation.

When Altman got fired, he was in the middle of discussions with investors about selling employee shares in OpenAI. The valuation on the table was over $80 billion, three times what it was just six months ago. If this deal goes through—although its fate is currently up in the air—it had the potential to make a lot of OpenAI employees and executives very rich, considering they often get equity as part of their compensation.

The chaos stretched into Monday, the supposed start of a company-wide Thanksgiving vacation week meant to acknowledge the hard work put in by OpenAI employees over a successful year. However, instead of a break, OpenAI’s offices were buzzing with frantic activity.

Sutskever, who’s the chief scientist at OpenAI and the one who fired Altman, did a surprising turnaround. In a tweet, he said, “I deeply regret my role in the board’s decisions. I never meant to hurt OpenAI. I cherish everything we’ve built, and I’ll do whatever it takes to bring the company back together.” This change of heart apparently happened after an emotional meeting with Brockman’s wife, Anna, and under the influence of a lot of pressure from many employees at the company.

By late Tuesday, the push to bring Altman back as the CEO of OpenAI had succeeded. As part of the deal, Altman agreed to an internal investigation into the claims of not being straightforward with the board, which had led to his initial firing, as reported by the Information.

On Tuesday night, employees celebrated the good news with a party at OpenAI’s offices. Brockman, who is back as the president, shared a selfie on X where he’s smiling alongside many joyful OpenAI employees. The caption read, “We are so back.”