Sam Altman To Return As OpenAI CEO

OpenAI on Tuesday made it known that its co-founder, Sam Altman will return as CEO, days after he was dismissed by the board.

“We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D’Angelo,” it disclosed in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

OpenAI’s board sacked Altman last week, with Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella announcing soon after he was hiring Altman to run a new artificial intelligence research team.

But in the fast-moving sequence of events, Altman said Tuesday he had the support of Nadella for his return as OpenAI’s CEO.

“With the new board and w Satya’s support, I’m looking forward to returning to Openai, and building on our strong partnership with (Microsoft),” he wrote on X.

Hundreds of staff at OpenAI threatened to quit following Altman’s dismissal.

In a letter released to media, the vast majority of the company’s 770-strong staff suggested they would follow Altman unless the board responsible for his departure resigned.

Among the signatories was co-founder Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s chief scientist and a member of the four-person board who pushed Altman out.

“I deeply regret my participation in the board’s actions,” Sutskever wrote on X on Monday. “I never intended to harm OpenAI.”

OpenAI had appointed Emmett Shear, a former chief executive of Amazon’s streaming platform Twitch, as its new CEO despite pressure from Microsoft and other major investors to reinstate Altman.