The OpenAI board crisis
The most important company in AI fires its chief executive and rehires him five days later.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 5 days
- Known to
- ± 12 hours
- Era
- Contemporary, Holocene
OpenAI's non-profit board removed Sam Altman on 17 November 2023 saying he had not been consistently candid. Nearly all of the roughly 770 staff threatened to resign and follow him to Microsoft; he returned on 22 November with a new board. The episode ended the idea that a non-profit structure could restrain the commercial development of AI, and the governance question it raised was never really answered.