OpenAI brings back ousted CEO, picks new board members

ISTANBUL

OpenAI announced Wednesday it is bringing back former CEO Sam Altman who was suddenly ousted from the US-based artificial intelligence (AI) research company five days ago.

"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," the firm wrote on X. "We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this."

Taylor is a board member at the e-commerce platform Shopify and was the former co-CEO of the American cloud-based software company, Salesforce, from November 2021 to November 2022.

Summers served as US Treasury Secretary from 1999 to 2001 during the Bill Clinton administration before serving as president of Harvard University between 2001 - 2006.

D’Angelo, who joined OpenAI in 2018, is the only member of the company's previous board of directors.

The board of OpenAI fired Altman on Friday because he "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities."

Altman, 38, who served as the firm's CEO since 2020, quickly found a new role Monday to lead a new AI research team at Microsoft, with Greg Brockman joining him -- the firm's co-founder and former president.

But most employees at OpenAI wrote in an open letter Monday that they intended to leave after Altman was let go. The letter demanded that Altman be reinstated along with Brockman, with almost all threatening to resign and join them at Microsoft.

Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott on Tuesday invited OpenAI employees to join his company who chose to resign from the firm.

Likewise, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff also offered jobs to OpenAI employees who chose to resign.

After Microsoft began investing in OpenAI with an initial $1 billion in 2019, the amount is estimated to have climbed to $13 billion.

Altman wrote on X that he is looking forward to returning to OpenAI and building on a strong partnership with Microsoft.

Brockman said he is also returning to OpenAI and wrote on X: "getting back to coding tonight."