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Sam Altman to Return as OpenAI Boss
Just days after being sacked, the firm’s co-founder is set to return after an extraordinary few days.
An agreement “in principle” has been reached that will see Sam Altman reinstated as OpenAI CEO and a new board put in place.
This follows a whirlwind few days for the Silicon Valley tech firm that has faced mass staff revolts, with the majority of OpenAI employees stating in an open letter that they would resign unless Altman was reinstated.
In a social media post, Altman said: “I am looking forward to returning to OpenAI”.
He added: “I love OpenAI, and everything I’ve done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together.
“I’m looking forward to returning to OpenAI, and building on our strong partnership with Microsoft.”
As well as reinstating Altman, OpenAI’s board will be partly reshuffled.
Five Days to Forget for the World’s Biggest AI Company
The news of Altman’s reintroduction as CEO comes just five days after the ChatGPT creator’s announced that it had ousted Sam Altman due to no longer being confident in his ability to lead.
In a statement, the company wrote that the former CEO “was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities,” which resulted in his dismissal. The details of the supposedly uncandid communications from Altman, who’s something of a poster boy for the AI industry, aren’t publicly known.
In the days following the unexpected ousting, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella took to X to state that the Big Tech firm has snapped up both Altman and Brockman, the latter of whom left OpenAI in protest following the board’s decision.
“We’re extremely excited to share the news that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, together with colleagues, will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team,” Nadella wrote. “We look forward to moving quickly to provide them with the resources needed for their success.”
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Altman reposted the announcement, adding: “the mission continues,” to which Nadella replied: “I’m super excited to have you join as CEO of this new group, Sam, setting a new pace for innovation. We’ve learned a lot over the years about how to give founders and innovators space to build independent identities and cultures within Microsoft, including GitHub, Mojang Studios, and LinkedIn, and I’m looking forward to having you do the same.”
Microsoft has been a partner of OpenAI for a number of years, having first invested $1 billion in the Altman-led company in 2019 — and it’s since been reported that Microsoft’s cumulative investment in the firm has reached $13 billion. OpenAI’s technology can be found within Microsoft products and services, not least search engine Bing, and through its 365 suite with the Copilot assistant.
