OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was removed from his role and has now been hired by Microsoft.
In a whirlwind few days for the AI race, Altman was ousted as CEO by OpenAI’s board on Friday, while his Cofounder and (former) OpenAI President Greg Brockman was removed from the board and stepped down as President. Altman and the board spent the weekend renegotiating a potential return before discussions broke down. News broke that Altman and Brockman had been hired by Microsoft to oversee an advanced AI research team as Silicon Valley went to bed on Sunday night and the UK woke up to its Monday.
Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, wrote on X:
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. We look forward to moving quickly to provide them with the resources needed for their success.”
The Verge reported that OpenAI would bring in Twitch CEO and Cofounder Emmett Shear as interim CEO, assuming the role from former CTO Mira Murati, who was given the responsibility after Altman’s surprise sacking on Friday. OpenAI hasn’t yet confirmed Shear’s hiring, however.
“We remain committed to our partnership with OpenAI and have confidence in our product roadmap, our ability to continue to innovate with everything we announced at Microsoft Ignite, and in continuing to support our customers and partners,” the rest of Nadella’s statement read. “We look forward to getting to know Emmett Shear and OAI’s new leadership team and working with them.”
We remain committed to our partnership with OpenAI and have confidence in our product roadmap, our ability to continue to innovate with everything we announced at Microsoft Ignite, and in continuing to support our customers and partners. We look forward to getting to know Emmett…
— Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) November 20, 2023
So, Wait… What?
Yip, it’s been a busy few days.
Almost exactly a year since OpenAI launched ChatGPT, which Altman confirmed last week had surpassed 1oo million weekly active users, OpenAI published a boost post on Friday afternoon Pacific Time with the news that Altman had been fired and Brockman had resigned.
OpenAI’s board comprises Chief Scientist, Cofounder and Board Director Ilya Sutskever, Helen Toner, the Director of Strategy at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, and former GeoSim Systems CEO Tasha McCauley. Sutskever, as reported by several outlets, was the driving force in ousting Altman.
One of the reasons OpenAI cited for Altman’s sacking was that he had not been “consistently candid in his communications”. OpenAI employees and Microsoft were shocked by the decision and were told it only minutes before it was publicly announced.
Altman and Brockman published a joint statement about how shocked and saddened they were on X. According to Brockman, Altman attended a meeting at noon PT on Friday in which every board member except for Brockman was present. Altman was told he was being fired, and the news would be public soon. Following that meeting, Brockman was called by Sutskever to be informed he was being removed from the board but would keep his role at the company itself.
Notably, Brockman said on X that he and Altman had been removed from their board positions over Google Meet instead of Teams — the video conferencing platform belonging to Microsoft, the company that has invested around $13 billion in OpenAI over the past few years.
Three high-level AI researchers then quit to protest Altman’s removal — Jakob Pachocki, Aleksander Madry, and Szymon Sidor.
What Happened Next?
Saturday heralded a turn of events, as OpenAI’s board started pondering a return for Altman after the immediate response of investor pressure —not only from its largest investor in Microsoft but also its second-largest shareholder in Thrive Capital.
The threat of an employee walkout was also palpable. Altman was a popular figure among OpenAI workers. Murati, too, publicly supported bringing Altman and Brockman back to OpenAI and was a key catalyst behind the negotiations to get them back.
Altman’s team had outlined a 5 PM Pacific Time deadline on Saturday for OpenAI’s board members to resign and reinstate Altman and Brockman. Otherwise, they would face a wave of resignations. The deadline passed without the board acting, and subsequently, OpenAI employees began posting their support for Altman and Brockman on social media in the form of hearts emojis — the implication being that every employee that posted a heart emoji would resign if Altman wasn’t brought back.
The negotiations to potentially bring Altman back extended into Sunday, with Altman’s camp again instituting a 5 PM PT deadline before proceedings would follow “a different path”, according to Altman’s team. Altman wore a guest badge to the Sunday round of discussions, and posted on X that it would be the “first and last time” he would ever wear one — signalling that he would either return as OpenAI CEO or never again.
first and last time i ever wear one of these pic.twitter.com/u3iKwyWj0a
— Sam Altman (@sama) November 19, 2023
Reportedly, the sticking point was the board couldn’t decide who should replace them if they were to leave, with Nadella the mediator between Altman, Brockman and the remaining OpenAI board members. Still, heading into Sunday night PT, OpenAI released a memo to employees saying it was “optimistic” it could bring Altman back.
Ultimately, OpenAI’s four-person board refused to step down and allow Altman to return, which also precipitated the move for Shear to replace Murati as interim CEO, as confirmed by Cofounder and board director Sutskever.
The Information reported on Sunday that OpenAI employees were told that forcing Altman out was the “only path” to fulfil the business’s mission statement of “broadly beneficial” AI. The website also confirmed that dozens of OpenAI employees had quit, with Google cited as a potential destination for the software engineers and architects.
With Microsoft having hired Altman and Brockman, the Seattle-based tech giant appears a likely endpoint for many employees leaving OpenAI too.
What Happens Now?
Only a fool would confidently make predictions about where we might end up with all of this after a few days with more plot twists than Game of Thrones.
What we can surely say is that Altman’s hiring by Microsoft signals the beginning of a potentially game-changing chapter in the AI race as he leverages his expertise for the company that had shown faith (and a healthy level of funding) in him and his transformative AI project since 2019.
There had been rumours about Altman’s “different path”, with him having previously pitched custom Nvidia-rivaling AI Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) chips as a potential business venture. Bloomberg reported that Altman’s TPU project was code-named “Tigris” and that “a number of prominent venture firms” had shown interest — including Microsoft, where, of course, he has now ended up.
There are no concrete details about what this “advanced AI research” team which Altman and and Brockman will manage, however.
Where OpenAI end up will be fascinating, given interim CEO Shear has no experience in the AI industry, and many (if not most) of their key developers and researchers could leave the organisation over the coming days, weeks and months in protest.
As companies like Google and XAI attempt to close the gap — or even pass — Microsoft and OpenAI, what could have been a disastrous weekend for Microsoft and its AI mission could well have turned 180 degrees into a seminal moment in its ambitions.
