| By Loc Le |
Within the span of just five days, OpenAI repeatedly shocked the tech industry as the company made a series of contentious leadership changes. During this period, the company behind ChatGPT “was embroiled in a power struggle that saw its CEO fired, replaced twice, and eventually brought back.”
Friday First Moves in the Power Play …
It all started on Friday, November 17th when OpenAI announced CEO Sam Altman would be fired and removed from the Board of Directors, and Mira Murati, the company’s Chief Technology Officer, would be the interim CEO. Despite being one of the founders of the AI company, the board lost confidence in Altman’s leadership and decided to fire him after conducting a review stating that “he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.” Shortly after the announcement, Altman also confirmed the news via a post on X, the social media platform previously known as Twitter.
Given the fact that OpenAI is one of the dominant leaders in AI development, this move not only surprised Altman, but also employees at the company who publicly showed their support and rallied behind him. Some employees even left the company on the same day including three senior researchers as well as Greg Brockman who was OpenAI’s President and cofounder. Brockman’s departure, which was announced via a post on X, was also a surprise to the OpenAI Board of Directors as he was originally only going to step down as Chairman of the Board while retaining his role at the company according to their announcement.
… Workers of OpenAI, Unite! (On a Saturday) …
On Saturday one day after Altman’s termination, Forbes reported senior employees at OpenAI and big investors such as Microsoft were upset by the board’s decision and began formulating countermoves to reinstate Altman. According to Forbes’ source, the plan to bring Altman back revolved around pressuring OpenAI’s new management with “a combination of mass revolt by senior researchers, withheld cloud computing credits from Microsoft, and a potential lawsuit from investors.” This plan quickly worked on the same day as The Verge reported that Altman and OpenAI’s board began discussions and ultimately reached an agreement that would result in Altman and Brockman’s return to the company while the current board would resign. However, the deal fell through in the end as it failed to be closed by the deadline of Saturday night.
… and No Rest on Sunday (or Monday)
Although Saturday’s discussions failed to produce a desirable outcome, Altman returned to the OpenAI offices on Sunday to continue the negotiations for his return to the company. Despite receiving support from interim CEO Murati and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI decided against Altman’s reinstatement and instead announced that former head of Twitch, Emmett Shear, would be the next interim CEO, marking the company’s third CEO in only a few days.
Facing even more backlash for their decision, OpenAI’s situation became worse on Monday as it was announced that Altman and Brockman would be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team and that hundreds of OpenAI employees would quit the company to join them. Furthermore, Ilya Sutskever, another OpenAI cofounder and chief scientist who allegedly started the motion for Altman’s dismissal, turned on the board and expressed his regret about his involvement.
A Wednesday Resolution
With Altman joining a new company, it finally seemed like the situation was coming to a conclusion. But this ended up not being the case as it was later reported that his deal with Microsoft was not finalized. This was quickly confirmed in an interview conducted by CNBC with Microsoft CEO Nadella who failed to give a concrete answer on Altman’s status. About a day later, shortly after midnight on Wednesday, OpenAI announced via a post on X that Altman would be returning to the company as CEO along with new board members.
In what seemingly appeared to have been a coup gone wrong by some of the now-ex board members of OpenAI to fire Altman, the reinstated CEO officially returned to the company along with Brockman who stated they will be stronger and more unified than ever.