Sam Altman returns as the CEO of OpenAI just one week after his removal due to perceived limitations in contributing to the company’s growth. The decision follows substantial pressure from hundreds of employees, including co-founder and board member Ilya Sutskever, overturning his recent ousting by the board. Ilya Sutskever signed a letter stating that the majority would all resign and work with Sam Altman at Microsoft.
Former CO-CEO Bret Taylor of Salesforce and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers will be joining OpenAI’s board. Adam D’Angelo, co-founder and CEO of the question-and-answer startup Quora, will also join the board.
Sam Altman and his co-founder Greg Brockman will be joining Microsoft to form a new AI lab.
When Sam Altman was fired, the technology chief Mira Murati was hired. However, she also joined the employees who wanted Altman’s return.
Satya Nadella will be supporting Altman to form the new board, said Sam Altman on X.
Furthermore, Satya said he, Sam, and Greg have discussed and agreed they all have important roles to play along with the OAI leadership team to ensure OpenAI continues to thrive and grow. They are looking forward to this strong partnership and helping customers and partners with the next generation of AI.
On Saturday night, Sam Altman wrote in a post on X that he loves the OpenAI team so much. Brockman retweeted it with a heart symbol, followed by other OpenAI employees.
OpenAI has been a historical startup worldwide since it released ChatGPT in Nov 2022.
Since 2019, Altman has led the startup as the public face of AI research and product development.
OpenAI, unlike most startups, was not structured to be like a typical corporation with huge equity controlled by founders, but it was part of a nonprofit that started in 2015.
The OpenAI founding team included Sutskever and Brockman. Altman and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman were the original investors and Tesla CEO Elon Musk committed to investing $1 billion in the project.
Also Read: Sam Altman’s Exit