Sam Altman, Co-Founder of OpenAI was forcibly removed and fired immediately by the company’s Board of Directors yesterday. The announcement comes only 11 days after the company’s inaugural Developer Day, where Altman took the stage to launch GPT4-Turbo, GPT Store, and new models. Mira Murati, former Chief Technology Officer, is named interim CEO while the board seeks a new permanent replacement for Altman, according to an OpenAI press release. Greg Brockman, former President and co-founder of OpenAI, also announced his resignation as a result of Altman’s departure.
In the same press release statement released by OpenAI, the board provided its justification for removing Altman. It spared no words:
“…The board concluded he [Altman] was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.”
OpenAI Press Release
Contrarily, the board praised Murati for her leadership and fully endorsed her for the role of interim CEO.
“Given her long tenure and close engagement with all aspects of the company, including her experience in AI governance and policy, the board believes she is uniquely qualified for the role and anticipates a seamless transition while it conducts a formal search for a permanent CEO,” the board said in the press release.
Murati is “honored and humbled” to step into the role of interim CEO in a statement she provided to Bloomberg.
Shock in Silicon Valley
The news took Silicon Valley, venture capital firms funding OpenAI, and even Microsoft by surprise. In fact, shock may be a better word.
Even Microsoft, which currently holds a 49% ownership stake in OpenAI and have deeply intertwined itself with OpenAI tech, reportedly learned a minute before the rest of the world.
Greg Brockman Quits OpenAI
Greg Brockman, co-founder, President, and Chairman of the Board, resigned fully from the company after the announcement of Altman being forcibly removed.
Greg took to X to elaborate further on his perspective of the sequence of events that occurred before the ousting of Altman:
Sam Altman is fired from OpenAI. Now What?
Perhaps the biggest question—more than what led to the firing of Altman—is what is next for OpenAI.
OpenAI was founded as a non-profit in 2015 with the core mission of ensuring that artificial general intelligence (or “AGI” for short) benefits all of humanity.
To date, AGI has not been achieved by OpenAI or any other AI tech company, including the likes of Google, Microsoft, Meta, and others. If anyone is close, they’re certainly not alluding to it or willing to publicly disclose it.
Theories will continue to run rampant as to why Altman was pushed out with such urgency, and already some are claiming across social media that perhaps AGI is a reason. It’s more likely that differences in vision, ambition, and pushing technological limits within the boundaries of secure and safe ethical use of AI are the reasons.
In any case, there is a lot more to come out as this story continues to unfold in real time.
Time for Mira Murati, new OpenAI CEO, to Shine
This is now Murati’s OpenAI, however brief it may be, and it is a prime opportunity for her to demonstrate leadership and restore trust. That will need to start from within OpenAI, as employees were also just as shocked as the rest of us with the news.
“It’s more important than ever that we stay focused, driven, and true to our core values,” she wrote in an internal memo to OpenAI employees.
