Early on Wednesday morning on X, formerly known as Twitter, the startup OpenAI announced that Sam Altman will be returning to his role as CEO. This action comes after he was removed from the board less than a week ago due to intense pressure from investors and staff.
Bret Taylor, a former co-CEO of Salesforce, and Larry Summers, a former Treasury Secretary, will join OpenAI’s board, the Microsoft-backed firm announced. Taylor will serve as chair. Quora is a question-and-answer startup, and Adam D’Angelo, co-founder and CEO, will continue to serve on the board.
Ilya Sutskever, Helen Toner, and Tasha McCauley were ousted from the board at the same time as Altman returned. Everyone had a hand in forcing Altman out, but as of Wednesday, Sutskever had retracted his endorsement of the coup and was still employed at OpenAI.
“To sort out the specifics, we are working together. OpenAI wrote in the X post, “I sincerely appreciate your patience during this.
A letter signed by hundreds of workers, including Sutskever, on Monday threatened to force the board to step down and reinstate Altman if they didn’t want to work for Microsoft.
In an X post on Monday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that Altman and his co-founder Greg Brockman would be joining the company to establish a new AI lab. When OpenAI made its announcement early on Wednesday morning, plans for that lab were already in motion.
Subsequently, it was announced late on Sunday that OpenAI has appointed Emmett Shear, the former CEO of Twitch, as Altman’s temporary substitute. Mira Murati, the chief technology officer of OpenAI, was initially supposed to take on that responsibility, but she quickly joined the chorus of staff members urging Altman’s return.
Source (CNBC)
