Open AI today announced that they are working on re-instating Sam Altman as CEO, following widespread resentment at his firing by its employees.
Capacity reported yesterday that 747 employees out of 770 had called for the board to quit as of Monday evening in an open letter.
In a post on LinkedIn today, OpenAi said they had reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor, Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo.
“I love OpenAI, and everything I’ve done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together,” Altman said on X (formerly twitter).
“When I decided to join Microsoft on Sunday evening, it was clear that was the best path for me and the team,” his tweet continued. In the open letter, OpenAI’s employee’s said they had been told that Microsoft was willing to hire all Open AI employee’s at the new subsidiary that would be led by Altman.
Microsoft had hired Altman almost immediately after the Open AI board at the time had fired him for reportedly lying to them, although it was not revealed exactly what was concealed.
The old board consisted of Adam D'Angelo, who will be staying on, Ilya Sutskever, Helen Toner, and Tasha McCauley.
Greg Brockman, the chair of the old board, resigned following the news of Altman’s exit. He had also been hired by Microsoft, but appears to be rejoining the firm alongside Altman.
“We are so back” Brockman posted on X.
The new board will be chaired by Bret Taylor, who was formerly the chair of twitter before it was acquired by Elon Musk last year. Taylor was also the co-CEO of Salesforce until January 2023.
Taylor was named in the open letter signed by OpenAI employees.
“Microsoft has assured us that there are positions for all OpenAl employees at this new subsidiary should we choose to join. We will take this step imminently, unless all current board members resign, and the board appoints two new lead independent directors, such as Bret Taylor and Will Hurd, and reinstates Sam Altman and Greg Brockman.”
Larry Summers was the US Treasury Secretary from 1999-2001 and is the president of Harvard University. He has spoken out against regulation that would slow down our ability to benefit from the technology.
D’Angelo is the only remaining member of the old board, and according to reports will be representing the old board in negotiations with Altman and his team.
