Roughly a year ago, Sam Altman was the CEO of the company at the center of one of the biggest tech revolutions in recent memory. Then he was ousted.
OpenAI, the hottest startup in the world thanks to its chatbot ChatGPT, fired Altman on Friday afternoon. It was a move that shocked the tech community and blindsided insiders at OpenAI and Microsoft, one of its major investors.
But according to reports over the weekend, OpenAI investors were scrambling to reinstate Altman before today's opening bell.
However, it seems they didn't move fast enough. Already, Altman has been hired by Microsoft along with former OpenAI President Greg Brockman to "lead a new advanced AI research team," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced in a post on X.
It's just the latest in what has been one of the weirdest leadership transitions in recent memory.
In a scathing blog post on Friday afternoon, OpenAI said 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," the post went on to say.
The company initially named Mira Murati, OpenAI's chief technology officer, as its interim CEO on Friday. However, OpenAI has now named its third CEO in as many days: Emmett Shear, a co-founder of the video streaming service Twitch.
So what exactly led to Altman's shocking ouster?
That is the $90 billion (the reported valuation OpenAI sought in a recent potential share sale) question.
Plenty of rumors are swirling about the cause, from Altman reportedly trying to raise funds for a separate startup to reported disagreements between OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever and Altman over the speed at which the company was pursuing AI developments.
One widely reported internal memo indicated Altman's removal had nothing to do with "malfeasance or anything related to our financial, business, safety or security/privacy practices."
Regardless of the issue, the public should know about it, Business Insider's Alistair Barr argued. Given the fact that OpenAI is working on AI that could potentially pose a danger to humanity, the public deserves to know about what, if anything, Altman wasn't being forthcoming about, Alistair wrote.
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