OpenAI says Sam Altman to return as chief executive under new board

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Ousted OpenAI chief Sam Altman is poised to return to run the company he co-founded under the supervision of a new board, following days of speculation and turmoil at the leading generative artificial intelligence start-up.

In a dramatic reversal, Altman, who was fired by OpenAI’s board of directors last week, will return to the helm of the high-profile AI start-up, the company said late on Tuesday in California. Greg Brockman, the co-founder who quit the company after Altman was fired, will return alongside him. Brockman was president of the company until he quit on Friday but did not say what role he would take up on his return.

Under an “agreement in principle”, Altman will serve under the supervision of a new board of directors, consisting initially of former Salesforce chief executive Bret Taylor as chair, former US Treasury secretary Larry Summers and Adam D’Angelo, an existing OpenAI board member and the chief executive of question-and-answer platform Quora.

Altman’s reinstatement provides a resolution to a crisis that pitted almost all of the company’s employees and investors against the four-person board.

“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 wrote on the social media site X in response to the announcement of his return.

The board that sacked Altman on Friday included D’Angelo, another OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, technology entrepreneur Tasha McCauley and Helen Toner from the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University.

Under pressure from employees, Sutskever on Monday morning flipped to support Altman’s reinstatement. While D’Angelo remains in place, the other three members are not on the new board, according to a statement from OpenAI on Tuesday night.

D’Angelo, Toner and McCauley had negotiated as a block and backed an outcome which saw only one of them remain, said one person involved in the negotiations, adding that there would be an independent investigation into what had happened.

With the “support” of the new OpenAI board, Altman said he looked forward to “returning to OpenAI, and building on our strong partnership with Microsoft”. Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella had pledged his support to Altman over the weekend, offering to hire him and Brockman or back their return to OpenAI. Microsoft owns a significant minority stake in OpenAI.

Nadella said he was “encouraged by the changes to the OpenAI board” and believed the decision was the “first essential step on a path to more stable, well-informed, and effective governance”. Altman and Brockman, had “key” roles to play alongside the company’s leadership team, he added.

Emmett Shear, co-founder of video-streaming service Twitch, who was appointed by the board as interim chief executive on Sunday, said he was “deeply pleased” with an outcome “that maximized safety alongside doing right by all stakeholders involved”.

Josh Kushner, founder of Thrive Capital, a major venture capital investor in OpenAI that had pushed for Altman’s return, said: “We believe this is the best outcome for the company, its employees, those who build on their technologies, and the world at large.”

OpenAI said in a statement: “We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this.”