Sam Altman Returns to OpenAI, Five Days After Being Fired

After nearly all of OpenAI's 770 employees threatened to quit and Microsoft offered to hire them, the board that removed Altman agreed to reinstate him and to replace most of itself. The people who fired him have largely left.

OpenAI said early this morning that Sam Altman is returning as chief executive, five days after its board fired him. The board that did the firing is being replaced: of the four directors who removed him, three are gone, and the new board will be led by Bret Taylor, a former co-chief executive of Salesforce, with Larry Summers, the former Treasury secretary, alongside. Greg Brockman is back too.

The five days in between were a spectacle. On Sunday night Microsoft announced it was hiring Altman and Brockman to run a new AI lab. By Monday morning more than 700 of OpenAI's roughly 770 employees had signed a letter saying they would follow them unless the board resigned — a letter that Ilya Sutskever, the board member widely believed to have led the firing, also signed, writing that he regretted his role. The company went through two interim chief executives. Microsoft's share price, which had fallen on Friday, hit a record high on Monday. By Tuesday the board was negotiating its own replacement.

The board never explained what Altman had been "not consistently candid" about, and the new arrangement includes an independent investigation into the firing, so the question is not closed. But the practical answer is settled: the board that was designed to be able to stop the company found that it couldn't. The employees, the investors, and the company's most important partner all sided with the man it fired, and the structure that was supposed to put mission ahead of money bent.

Whether that is a relief or a warning depends on what you think OpenAI is for. Both readings were on the internet by breakfast.