According to co-founder and board director Ilya Sutskever, Sam Altman will not return as CEO of OpenAI despite efforts by the company’s executives to bring him back. After a weekend of negotiations with the board, which fired him Friday, as well as remaining executives and top investors, Altman will not return to the startup he co-founded in 2015, Sutskever told employees. Emmett Shear, co-founder of Amazon-owned video streaming site Twitch, will take over as interim CEO, Sutskever said.
The decision – which contradicted comments OpenAI executives shared with employees on Saturday and early Sunday – could deepen a crisis caused by Altman’s sudden ouster by the board and the removal of President Greg Brockman from the board Board was triggered on Friday. Brockman, a key engineer behind the company’s successes, resigned later that day, followed by three senior researchers, threatening to trigger a broader wave of defections to OpenAI’s competitors, including Google, and to a new company that Altman would invest in had planned his dismissal as a result.
Shortly after 9 p.m., shortly after the decision was announced internally, distraught employees streamed out of OpenAI headquarters in San Francisco. One of the people leaving the office appeared to be research director Bob McGrew, who was one of the many executives working to bring Altman and Brockman back.