OpenAI Parts Ways with Sam Altman, Microsoft Welcomes Him Aboard
The board of directors at OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, has decided to relieve Sam Altman of his CEO position. Miru Murati, the Chief Technical Officer, has been appointed as the interim CEO. However, Altman did not stay unemployed for long—he has already been invited to join Microsoft, where he will lead a new internal artificial intelligence team, as reported by Bloomberg.
Altman's departure from OpenAI occurred after a board meeting on the evening of Friday, November 17. According to the statement on the OpenAI website, Sam Altman was not always transparent in his communication with the board of directors.
"This hinders his ability to perform his duties. The board is no longer confident in his ability to continue managing OpenAI," the board of directors stated in their announcement.
The news of Altman's dismissal was met with strong disapproval from OpenAI employees. In addition to him, several key developers, including those responsible for creating ChatGPT, may also leave the company. Notably, co-founder and former president of OpenAI, Greg Brockman, resigned from the company a few hours after Altman's sudden removal from the CEO position.
According to Brockman, the decision of the OpenAI board members was unexpected for both him and Altman. He revealed that the day before, OpenAI's Chief Scientist, Ilya Sutskever, informed Altman about a call from the board. Brockman was not present at this meeting.
Later, the OpenAI board of directors decided to reconsider their decision to remove Altman from his position. However, Altman himself declined to return to the company. According to reports in the media, Altman made returning conditional on a complete change in the composition of the board of directors.
Now, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman will be working at Microsoft on artificial intelligence projects. "Microsoft will act swiftly to provide them with the resources needed for their success," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in a LinkedIn post on Monday morning.
At the same time, Microsoft does not intend to end its collaboration with OpenAI, in which the company has already invested billions of dollars.