OpenAI announces return of Sam Altman as CEO of the startup – 11/22/2023 – Tech

OpenAI announced this Wednesday (22) that it has reached an agreement for Sam Altman to return to the company as CEO days after his dismissal, ending a long discussion about the future of the startup at the center of the artificial intelligence boom.

In addition to Altman’s return, the company agreed in principle to partially reconstitute the board of directors that had fired him. Former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers will join Quora CEO and current director Adam D’Angelo, OpenAI said.

Sam Altman said in a post on X: “I’m looking forward to returning to OpenAI.”

His return caps a tumultuous weekend, in which Altman agreed to move to OpenAI’s financial backer, Microsoft, to lead a new research team there. This followed a rejection by OpenAI’s board of its first attempt to return to the startup, on Sunday, by naming former Twitch chief Emmett Shear as interim CEO.

In a post on X, Shear celebrated Tuesday night’s result, which he said he followed.

Altman’s firing brought uncertainty to both OpenAI and Microsoft, which moved quickly to do damage control over the weekend, promising to hire him and Greg Brockman, the startup’s president.

Brockman, who had resigned after Altman’s firing, said in an X post that he was “returning to programming tonight.”

On Monday, nearly all of OpenAI’s more than 700 employees threatened to leave unless the board resigned and reinstalled Altman and Brockman, according to a letter reviewed by Reuters.

In a statement on X, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella welcomed the changes to OpenAI’s board.

“We believe this is an essential first step towards a path towards more stable, well-informed and effective governance,” he said.