New details emerge about the dramatic firing of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman after the company’s president resigned in protest at the board’s shocking move.
OpenAI President Greg Brockman left the company almost immediately after the company’s board fired Altman on Friday following reports of disputes over the security of powerful AI systems like ChatGPT.
The company’s chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, who is also a board member, led the shocking coup against Altman with the support of three independent board members.
According to Brockman, Sutskever fired Altman in a video chat at midday Friday and a few minutes later told Brockman that he was being removed as chairman, but asked him to stay on as president and report to new interim CEO Mira Murati.
Brockman declined the offer to remain at OpenAI as president, sending a company-wide message saying, “Due to today’s news, I am resigning.”
OpenAI President Greg Brockman (above) left the company almost immediately after the company’s board fired CEO Sam Altman on Friday
Microsoft-backed OpenAI released its ChatGPT chatbot in late 2022. It uses generative AI, meaning it can learn from past data to create human-like creative content such as text, images and computer code.
News of Altman’s firing surprised employees at Silicon Valley and OpenAI, as the 38-year-old was hailed as a pioneer and one of the leading figures in the high-risk world of AI.
However, according to Bloomberg, his downfall appears to have been the result of a simmering feud with Sutskever over the safety of AI, the speed of technological development and the company’s commercialization.
In a post on
When Altman joined the Google Meet at noon, he was surprised to see that the rest of the board except Brockman had also joined.
Sutskever then told Altman that he had been fired and that the news would be made public “very soon.”
Within an hour, OpenAI released an unusually blunt and harsh statement saying the board had concluded that Altman “was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, which prevented him from fulfilling his responsibilities.”
“The board no longer has confidence in its ability to continue to lead OpenAI,” the statement continued.
OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever (above), who is also a board member, led the shocking coup against Altman with the support of three independent board members
Sam Altman, 38, became a sensation in the tech world with the release of ChatGPT, a chatbot with artificial intelligence and unparalleled capabilities
Brockman says he received a text message from Sutskever at 12:19 p.m. asking him to participate in a “quick conversation.”
Minutes later, Sutskever told Brockman in a Google Meet about Altman’s firing, saying that Brockman could remain president but not a member of the board, which Brockman chaired.
Brockman said that OpenAI’s management team was not informed of the move in advance, with the exception of interim CEO Murati, who was informed of it the evening before.
The departures surprised many employees, who discovered the abrupt leadership change through an internal memo and the company’s publicly accessible blog.
“We too are still trying to figure out what exactly happened,” Brockman posted on
Altman confirmed his firing in several posts
Altman does not hold an equity stake in the company, having previously stated that he believes the development of AI should not be primarily driven by profit.
In addition to Sutskever, OpenAI’s now four-member board includes three independent directors who do not work in the company and do not hold any equity stake.
They are Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, technology entrepreneur Tasha McCauley and Helen Toner from the Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology.
Sutskever, who orchestrated Altman’s removal, is also a co-founder of OpenAI, although he is far less well known to the public than Brockman or Altman, who have promoted ChatGPT heavily in recent weeks.
Mira Murati was Altman’s top lieutenant and will replace him as interim CEO. The two are seen together above earlier this month
According to his LinkedIn profile, Sutskever holds degrees from the Open University of Israel and the University of Toronto.
He previously co-founded DNN Research, a deep learning startup that was acquired by Google in 2013.
Sutskever is a co-founder of OpenAI, which originally launched as a nonprofit in 2015 with $1 billion in funding from a consortium of engineers including Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel.
“We believe that AI should be an extension of individual human will and, in the spirit of freedom, be distributed as widely and evenly as is safely possible,” Sutskever wrote in a statement at the time of the group’s founding.
“The outcome of this project is uncertain and the work is difficult, but we believe that the goal and the structure are right.”
In 2019, OpenAI restructured to allow raising venture capital and has raised billions from investors such as Microsoft.
“Microsoft remains committed to Mira and her team as we bring the next era of AI to our customers,” a spokesman for the software maker told Portal on Friday.
Sutskever’s most recent post on