A surprising turn in OpenAI. Sam Altman returns to office
Sam Altman returns as CEO of OpenAI. He was fired from his job on Friday, starting a weekend of chaos in Silicon Valley.
In a dramatic change, Altman, who was fired last week by OpenAI’s board, will return to the helm of the high-profile AI startup, the company said late in the evening. Greg Brockman, a co-founder who left the company after Altman’s firing, will return with him. Brockman was the company’s president until he resigned on Friday, but he did not say what role he would take on when he returned.
New management at OpenAI
Under the “agreement in principle,” Altman will serve under the supervision of a new board of directors, initially consisting of former Salesforce CEO Bret Taylor as chairman, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and Adam D’Angelo, an existing OpenAI board member and chief executive Quora question and answer platform.
Altman’s reinstatement resolves a crisis that has left nearly all of the company’s employees and investors facing a four-member board.
“I love OpenAI and everything I have done over the last few days has been in the service of keeping this team and its mission together,” Altman wrote on the social media site X in response to the announcement of his return.
Internal games
The board that fired Altman on Friday included D’Angelo, fellow OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, tech entrepreneur Tasha McCauley and Helen Toner of Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technologies.
Under pressure from employees, Sutskever decided Monday morning to support Altman’s reinstatement. D’Angelo remains in his position and the other three members are not on the new board, according to an OpenAI statement released Tuesday evening.
