Tuesday 10.03pm: Altman makes a dramatic (and predictable) return
Sam Altman, co-founder of OpenAI, is set to return as the company's boss following his recent dismissal by the board - ending five days of turmoil at the ChatGPT developer.
His re-appointment is part of an agreement that includes appointing new board members.
we are so back pic.twitter.com/YcKwkqdNs5
— Greg Brockman (@gdb) November 22, 2023
We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo.
We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this.
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) November 22, 2023
Tuesday morning: OpenAI in ‘intense discussion’ to appease workers
OpenAI is reportedly in “intense talks” with staff in a bid to ease tensions, according to reports by Bloomberg.
According to a memo cited by the publication, OpenAI’s head of global affairs, Anna Makanju, has told staff that the company is looking at “mutually acceptable” options with Altman.
Tuesday 4:00am PST: Microsoft calls for changes at OpenAI
Microsoft boss Satya Nadella is calling for alterations to the ChatGPT creator's board, and said "something has to change around the governance", according to reports by CNBC.
Nadella dismissed that the debacle would cause long-term damages at OpenAI, even though the tech firm is in the midst of an employee revolt.
Employees at OpenAI have been offered the chance to join Altman and Greg Brockman at Microsoft.
Monday 10.15am PST: Staff threaten to quit
OpenAI is facing an employee revolt, with 490 employees threatening to leave unless the board resigns and reinstates Sam Altman as the boss, along with cofounder and former president Greg Brockman.
An open letter penned by the staff can be found at the bottom of the page. Notably, it was co-signed by Ilya Sutskever, the company’s chief scientist and a member of its board.
In the letter it said: "The process through which you terminated Sam Altman and removed Greg Brockman from the board has jeopardized all of this work and undermined our mission and company. Your conduct has made it clear you did not have the competence to oversee OpenAI.
The leadership team suggested that the most stabilizing path forward - the one that would best serve our mission, company, stakeholders, employees and the public - would be for you to resign and put in place a qualified board that could lead the company forward in stability.
Your actions have made it obvious that you are incapable of overseeing OpenAI. We are unable to work for or with people that lack competence, judgement and care for our mission and employees. We, the undersigned, may choose to resign from OpenAI and join the newly announced Microsoft subsidiary run by Sam Altman and Greg Brockman.
Monday 5.15am PST: Sutskever regret?
I deeply regret my participation in the board's actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we've built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company.
— Ilya Sutskever (@ilyasut) November 20, 2023
Monday morning: Altman and Brockman join Microsoft
Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, who recently departed from OpenAI, have been hired by Microsoft to head an advanced artificial intelligence (AI) research team.
Nadella keeps the door open for other employees, promising that they'll be given the resources they need should they decide to leave.
We remain committed to our partnership with OpenAI and have confidence in our product roadmap, our ability to continue to innovate with everything we announced at Microsoft Ignite, and in continuing to support our customers and partners. We look forward to getting to know Emmett…
— Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) November 20, 2023
Sunday evening: Altman not returning, Twitch boss to take over
Altman's return will not be taking place, according to internal memos from Sutskever.
Emmett Shear, co-founder of Twitch, has been appointed as the interim CEO of OpenAI following the shock exit of co-founder Sam Altman.
Sunday 19 12:00pm : OpenAI board plans to reinstate Altman slow
Lightcap, Murati and other high-ups work with the board to help push for the return of Altman.
However, the board is concerned about who will replace them and they are resisting his reinstatement.
Saturday 5:35pm PST: Board begins working towards Altman's return
Board members had agreed to step down and allow Altman and Brockman to return, according to reports by The Verge.
However, the board were yet to do so and missed a key deadline of 5 pm, in which numerous employees were set to depart - most of whom were expected to follow Altman in his new venture.
Saturday afternoon: Investors start pushing for Altman's return
Microsoft boss Satya Nadella was reportedly "furious" about finding out about the changes only "minutes" after they were made public.
Other institutional investors such as Khosla Ventures showcased their support for Altman and said it would be in support of “whatever he does next.”
Investors like LinkedIn and firms like Sequoia Capital weren't given any warning of the changes, and some venture capitalist backers have even considered launching a lawsuit.
Saturday afternoon: Rumours swirl about an Altman-led AI competitor
Investors were told by Altman about plans to launch another AI startup, according to reports.
The exact details were minimal, but reports included mentions of a chip manufacturer to rival Nvidia.
Saturday morning: US$86 billion share sale at risk
A sale of employee-owned shares had been planned and would have seen the company valued at US$86 billion.
According to employees involved in the sale, they believed it was no longer going to take place.
Saturday 18 10:00am: Internal memo sheds light on Altman's exit
An internal memo seen by reporters at Axios revealed Altman's departure was not because of "malfeasance or anything related to our financial, business, safety, or security/privacy practices".
OpenAI's chief operating officer Brad Lightcap, who wrote the memo, said the decision "took [the management team] by surprise" and that management was "having multiple conversations with the board to try to better understand the reasons and process behind their decision."
The full memo can be read here.
Friday 4.09pm PST: Brockman quits
After learning today’s news, this is the message I sent to the OpenAI team: https://t.co/NMnG16yFmm pic.twitter.com/8x39P0ejOM
— Greg Brockman (@gdb) November 18, 2023
Three other senior researchers also quit, including director of research Jakub Pachocki and head of preparedness Aleksander Madry.
Friday afternoon: Microsoft responds to firing
Microsoft, a 49% owner of OpenAI having invested billions into the company, reconfirms its partnership and support of the ChatGPT-creator. No mention of Altman is made.
Chief executive officer Satya Nadella said in a statement:
"As you saw at Microsoft Ignite this week, we’re continuing to rapidly innovate for this era of AI, with over 100 announcements across the full tech stack from AI systems, models, and tools in Azure, to Copilot. Most importantly, we’re committed to delivering all of this to our customers while building for the future. We have a long-term agreement with OpenAI with full access to everything we need to deliver on our innovation agenda and an exciting product roadmap, and remain committed to our partnership, and to Mira and the team. Together, we will continue to deliver the meaningful benefits of this technology to the world."
Friday afternoon: OpenAI employees confused as Sutskever defends decision
A town hall meeting for all OpenAI employees takes place. Concerns are highlighted and there is confusion among employees and executives.
Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI's chief scientist, defends the board members responsible for the ousting and is quick to dismiss talks of a "hostile takeover".
Instead, he claimed the reason was to maintain the company's aims of making the technology beneficial to everybody in society.
Friday afternoon: Altman and Brockman respond
i loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people.
will have more to say about what’s next later.
????
— Sam Altman (@sama) November 17, 2023
Sam and I are shocked and saddened by what the board did today.
Let us first say thank you to all the incredible people who we have worked with at OpenAI, our customers, our investors, and all of those who have been reaching out.
We too are still trying to figure out exactly…
— Greg Brockman (@gdb) November 18, 2023
Friday 12.30pm PST: OpenAI confirms 'leadership changes'
OpenAI posted an update on its website outlining that Sam Altman would be stepping down immediately.
Mira Murati, the company's chief technology officer, takes over as interim boss, while Greg Brockman is confirmed to be stepping down as chairman despite remaining at the company.
“Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process, which concluded that he 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 company said in a statement.
How it started
OpenAI has become a household name, penned deals with Microsoft worth billions, and has rewritten the direction of the tech industry completely.
But it is easy to forget that the group began its existence as a non-profit less than a decade ago.
Sam Altman never owned a stake in OpenAI and during his time at the top he only paid himself a salary of US$65,000 or “whatever the minimum for health insurance is”.
On the surface, it appears the 38-year-old embraced OpenAI’s core mission “of ensuring that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity”.
However, board members weren’t convinced and after launching a deliberate review process, they decided Altman had failed to remain “consistently candid in his communications”, sending the co-founder packing.
Sam and I are shocked and saddened by what the board did today.
Let us first say thank you to all the incredible people who we have worked with at OpenAI, our customers, our investors, and all of those who have been reaching out.
We too are still trying to figure out exactly…
— Greg Brockman (@gdb) November 18, 2023
Made up of AI scientists, members of the board had been linked to altruist organisations which focus on making sure the technology doesn’t travel down the wrong path.
Altman argued the ramp-up in investments, launching of paid-for ChatGPT services and other fundraising activities had all been to help cover the expensive costs of running its computing power.
It was clear that the board's view and concerns about the industry had differed from Altman's.
San Francisco residents are typically well-prepared for earthquakes but it was only Silicon Valley which felt the reverberations – and the locals hadn’t prepped.
Employees, management, executives and even tech enthusiasts on X were shocked by the decision and as if out of an episode of a boardroom drama it looked as if Altman may have returned.
He did not, and alongside Greg Brockman, the company's former chair, the Missourian will join the AI division at the antithesis of non-profit tech, Microsoft.
Microsoft promises to maintain its partnership with OpenAI, but with murmurs of Altman starting a competitor and now working for the giant, the future is not as clear.
So how did we end up with the biggest plot twist in AI so far, and should we have seen it coming?
Humanitarian beginnings
OpenAI was founded in 2015 by Altman, Elon Musk and several other influential scientists and executives.
Before the start, Altman had been making his name working as boss of Y Combinator, a start-up accelerator.
First entering the scene in 2005 with his start-up social network Loopt, Altman became president of Y Combinator in 2014, where he would remain until 2019.
Y Combinator helped grow household names like Reddit, Stripe and Airbnb and its non-profit spinoff YC research was cited as a key supporter of OpenAI from its inception.
Altman in his Loopt days Source:YouTube Jay Donovan
With a clear-cut focus on ensuring that AI remained in the interest of everyone, the group got to work, with Musk early on recruiting Ilya Sutskever as chief scientist.
Sutskever, a legend in the field for his research into neural networks, had up until then been working for Google’s Brain Lab, the company's AI division, but Musk worried that the search engine was failing to consider all the dangers of the technology.
Over the next three years, with a US$1 billion ‘financial commitment’ from Musk, Amazon Web Services, Infosys (NASDAQ:INFY) and others, OpenAI began developing the technology, working with NVIDIA and numerous influential figures in the scientific field.
OpenAI's model beat a DOTA 2 player in 2017 Source: ShackNews
ChatGPT was still in its infancy and ideas of commercialisation were far from the focus.
Here comes the money
In 2019, OpenAI changed and so too with it did the attitudes of its founders.
Undergoing a restructuring ahead of the release of ChatGPT 2, which was garnering interest for its human-like replies, OpenAI became ‘capped’ for profit – with profits limited to 100 times investment.
By this time Musk had left the board, with reports citing that a power struggle and conflict of interests because of Tesla had led to his exit.
Musk claimed he invested US$100 million in OpenAI but research by Tech Radar revealed that only around US$15 million could be traced back to the Tesla boss.
Additionally, of the US$1 billion pledged by early backers, only US$133 million was donated, with YC Research failing to donate a single dollar.
Much of the funds arrived after 2019 following the launch of the for-profit arm and by 2021, the non-profit arm was largely obsolete, receiving around US$3,000 in donations.
Illya Sutskever, Sam Altman, Mira Murati and Greg Brockman Source: Wired
What now?
OpenAI has brought in Emmett Shear as the new chief executive, who has vowed to open an investigation into Altman’s sacking.
Shear comes from Twitch, the live video streaming platform acquired by Amazon in 2014.
A letter has been sent to the directors demanding the reinstatement of Altman and the resigination of the board, with employees threatening to quit if not.
The full letter reads:
To the Board of Directors at OpenAI,
OpenAI is the world’s leading AI company. We, the employees of OpenAI, have developed the best models and pushed the field to new frontiers. Our work on AI safety and governance shapes global norms. The products we built are used by millions of people around the world. Until now, the company we work for and cherish has never been in a stronger position.
The process through which you terminated Sam Altman and removed Greg Brockman from the board has jeopardized all of this work and undermined our mission and company. Your conduct has made it clear you did not have the competence to oversee OpenAI.
When we all unexpectedly learned of your decision, the leadership team of OpenAI acted swiftly to stabilize the company. They carefully listened to your concerns and tried to cooperate with you on all grounds. Despite many requests for specific facts for your allegations, you have never provided any written evidence. They also increasingly realized you were not capable of carrying out your duties, and were negotiating in bad faith.
The leadership team suggested that the most stabilizing path forward - the one that would best serve our mission, company, stakeholders, employees and the public - would be for you to resign and put in place a qualified board that could lead the company forward in stability.
Leadership worked with you around the clock to find a mutually agreeable outcome. Yet within two days of your initial decision, you again replaced interim CEO Mira Murati against the best interests of the company. You also informed the leadership team that allowing the company to be destroyed “would be consistent with the mission.”
Your actions have made it obvious that you are incapable of overseeing OpenAI. We are unable to work for or with people that lack competence, judgement and care for our mission and employees. We, the undersigned, may choose to resign from OpenAI and join the newly announced Microsoft subsidiary run by Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. Microsoft has assured us that there are positions for all OpenAI 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.