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The ousted leader of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI is returning to the company that fired him late last week, culminating a days-long power struggle that shocked the tech industry and brought attention to the conflicts around how to safely build artificial intelligence.
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San Francisco-based OpenAI said in a statement late Tuesday: “We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board.”
The board, which replaces the one that fired Altman on Friday, will be led by former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor, who also chaired Twitter’s board before its takeover by Elon Musk last year. The other members will be former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo.
OpenAI’s previous board of directors, which included D’Angelo, had refused to give specific reasons for why it fired Altman, leading to a weekend of internal conflict at the company and growing outside pressure from the startup’s investors.
The chaos also accentuated the differences between Altman — who’s become the face of generative AI’s rapid commercialization since ChatGPT’s arrival a year ago — and members of the company’s board who have expressed deep reservations about the safety risks posed by AI as it gets more advanced.
Microsoft, which has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI and has rights to its current technology, quickly moved to hire Altman on Monday, as well as another co-founder and former president, Greg Brockman, who had quit in protest after Altman’s removal. That emboldened a threatened exodus of nearly all of the startup’s 770 employees who signed a letter calling for the board’s resignation and Altman’s return.
One of the four board members who participated in Altman’s ouster, OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, later expressed regret and joined the call for the board’s resignation.
Microsoft in recent days had pledged to welcome all employees who wanted to follow Altman and Brockman to a new AI research unit at the software giant. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also made clear in a series of interviews Monday that he was still open to the possibility of Altman returning to OpenAI, so long as the startup’s governance problems are solved.
“We are encouraged by the changes to the OpenAI board,” Nadella posted on X late Tuesday. “We believe this is a first essential step on a path to more stable, well-informed, and effective governance.”
In his own post, Altman said that “with the new board and (with) Satya’s support, I’m looking forward to returning to OpenAI, and building on our strong partnership with (Microsoft).”
Co-founded by Altman as a nonprofit with a mission to safely build so-called artificial general intelligence that outperforms humans and benefits humanity, OpenAI later became a for-profit business but one still run by its nonprofit board of directors. It’s not clear yet if the board’s structure will change with its newly appointed members.
“We are collaborating to figure out the details,” OpenAI posted on X. “Thank you so much for your patience through this.”
Nadella said Brockman, who was OpenAI’s board chairman until Altman’s firing, will also have a key role to play in ensuring the group “continues to thrive and build on its mission.”
Hours earlier, Brockman returned to social media as if it were business as usual, touting a feature called ChatGPT Voice that was rolling out to users.
“Give it a try — totally changes the ChatGPT experience,” Brockman wrote, flagging a post from OpenAI’s main X account that featured a demonstration of the technology and playfully winking at recent turmoil.
“It’s been a long night for the team and we’re hungry. How many 16-inch pizzas should I order for 778 people,” the person asks, using the number of people who work at OpenAI. ChatGPT’s synthetic voice responded by recommending around 195 pizzas, ensuring everyone gets three slices.
As for OpenAI’s short-lived interim CEO Emmett Shear, the second interim CEO in the days since Altman’s ouster, he posted on X that he was “deeply pleased by this result, after (tilde)72 very intense hours of work.”
“Coming into OpenAI, I wasn’t sure what the right path would be,” wrote Shear, the former head of Twitch. “This was the pathway that maximized safety alongside doing right by all stakeholders involved. I’m glad to have been a part of the solution.”
Microsoft snapped up Sam Altman and another architect of OpenAI for a new venture after their sudden departures shocked the artificial intelligence world, leaving the newly installed CEO of the ChatGPT maker to paper over tensions by vowing to investigate Altman’s firing.
The developments Monday come after a weekend of drama and speculation about how the power dynamics would shake out at OpenAI, whose chatbot kicked off the generative AI era by producing human-like text, images, video and music.
It ended with former Twitch leader Emmett Shear taking over as OpenAI’s interim chief executive and Microsoft announcing it was hiring Altman and OpenAI co-founder and former President Greg Brockman to lead Microsoft’s new advanced AI research team.
Despite the rift between the key players behind ChatGPT and the company they helped build, both Shear and Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella said they are committed to their partnership.
Microsoft invested billions of dollars in the startup and helped provide the computing power to run its AI systems. Nadella wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that he was “extremely excited” to bring on the former executives of OpenAI and looked “forward to getting to know” Shear and the rest of the management team.
In a reply on X, Altman said “the mission continues,” while Brockman posted, “We are going to build something new & it will be incredible.”
OpenAI said Friday that Altman was pushed out after a review found he was “not consistently candid in his communications” with the board of directors, which had lost confidence in his ability to lead the company.
In an X post Monday, Shear said he would hire an independent investigator to look into what led up to Altman’s ouster and write a report within 30 days.
“It’s clear that the process and communications around Sam’s removal has been handled very badly, which has seriously damaged our trust,” wrote Shear, who co-founded Twitch, an Amazon-owned livestreaming service popular with video gamers.
He said he also plans in the next month to “reform the management and leadership team in light of recent departures into an effective force” and speak with employees, investors and customers.
After that, Shear said he would “drive changes in the organization,” including “significant governance changes if necessary.” He noted that the reason behind the board removing Altman was not a “specific disagreement on safety.”
OpenAI last week declined to answer questions on what Altman’s alleged lack of candor was about. Its statement said his behavior was hindering the board’s ability to exercise its responsibilities.
An OpenAI spokeswoman didn’t immediately reply to an email Monday seeking comment. A Microsoft representative said the company would not be commenting beyond its CEO’s statement.
After Altman was pushed out Friday, he stirred speculation that he might be coming back into the fold in a series of tweets. He posted a photo of himself with an OpenAI guest pass on Sunday, saying this is “first and last time i ever wear one of these.”
Hours earlier, he tweeted, “i love the openai team so much,” which drew heart replies from Brockman, who quit after Altman was fired, and Mira Murati, OpenAI’s chief technology officer who was initially named as interim CEO.
It’s not clear what transpired between the announcement of Murati’s interim role Friday and Shear’s hiring, though she was among several employees on Monday who tweeted, “OpenAI is nothing without its people.” Altman replied to many with heart emojis.
Shear said he stepped down as Twitch CEO because of the birth of his now-9-month-old son but “took this job because I believe that OpenAI is one of the most important companies currently in existence.”
His beliefs on the future of AI came up on a podcast in June. Shear said he’s generally an optimist about technology but has serious concerns about the path of artificial intelligence toward building something “a lot smarter than us” that sets itself on a goal that endangers humans.
It’s an issue that Altman consistently faced since he helped catapult ChatGPT to global fame. In the past year, he has become Silicon Valley’s most sought-after voice on the promise and potential dangers of artificial intelligence.
He went on a world tour to meet with government officials earlier this year, drawing big crowds at public events as he discussed both the risks of AI and attempts to regulate the emerging technology.
Altman posted Friday on X that “i loved my time at openai” and later called his ouster a “weird experience.”
“If Microsoft lost Altman he could have gone to Amazon, Google, Apple, or a host of other tech companies craving to get the face of AI globally in their doors,” Daniel Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities, said in a research note.
Microsoft is now in an even stronger position on AI, Ives said. Its shares rose nearly 2% before the opening bell and were nearing an all-time high Monday.
The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement allowing OpenAI access to part of the AP’s text archives.
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