The startup OpenAI announced early on Wednesday morning on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Sam Altman will be returning to his role as CEO. The action was taken in response to intense pressure from the board's investors and staff, who removed him less than a week ago.
The Microsoft-backed firm OpenAI announced that Bret Taylor, a former co-CEO of Salesforce, and Larry Summers, a former Treasury Secretary, will join the board. Taylor will serve as chair. The CEO and co-founder of the question-and-answer firm Quora, Adam D'Angelo, will continue to serve on the board. Hundreds of workers, including co-founder and board member Ilya Sutskever, signed a letter on Monday threatening to leave Microsoft to work with Altman if the board didn't step down and reinstate him.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said on Monday in an X post that Altman and his co-founder Greg Brockman will be joining the company to establish a new AI lab.
That came after OpenAI announced late on Sunday that Emmett Shear, the former CEO of Twitch, had been appointed as Altman's temporary replacement. The OpenAI technical leader Mira Murati was initially supposed to take on that job, but she quickly joined the chorus of workers demanding Altman's return. As word spread on Saturday that a number of well-known investors, including Microsoft, Tiger Global, Thrive Capital, and Sequoia Capital, were attempting to overturn the board's decision from the previous day, Altman's swift reinstatement started to appear likely. Those businesses were taken aback by the decision because none of them had board seats.
Serving as the company's CEO since 2019, Altman represented artificial intelligence research and product development to the general public in addition to being the company's top executive of a rapidly expanding business.
