Altman’s departure comes after a review by the company’s board.
November 17, 2023, 8:00 p.m. ET
• 4 min reading
Sam Altman is stepping down from his role as CEO of OpenAI, the company announced Friday.
The departure follows a review process conducted by the company’s board, said OpenAI, the maker of the popular conversation bot ChatGPT.
“Mr. Altman’s departure follows an advisory review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, which prevented him from fulfilling his responsibilities,” OpenAI said in a statement. “The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue to lead OpenAI.”
The company’s chief technology officer, Mira Murati, will take on the role of CEO on an interim basis, OpenAI said.
“I enjoyed my time at Openai. It has changed me personally and hopefully the world a little. What I enjoyed most was working with such talented people,” Altman said in a statement to
After Altman’s departure, OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman took over announced that he had resigned “based on today’s news.”
“I sincerely wish you all the best,” Brockman said in a message to the OpenAI team shared on X. “I continue to believe in the mission of creating safe AGI that benefits all of humanity.”
OpenAI was founded as a non-profit organization in 2015 and has gained traction since making ChatGPT available to the public a year ago. The chatbot now has more than 100 million weekly users, Altman announced earlier this month.
The company has now grown dramatically. As The Information reported, OpenAI was expected to generate more than $1 billion in revenue in October from sales of its artificial intelligence products over a year.
In January, Microsoft announced it would invest $10 billion in OpenAI. The move deepened a longstanding relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI that began four years ago with a $1 billion investment. Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, offers users access to ChatGPT.
Speaking to ABC News’ Rebecca Jarvis in March, Altman said AI has the potential to fundamentally improve people’s lives, but also poses serious risks.
“We have to be careful here,” Altman said. “I think people should be happy that we’re a little bit afraid of this.”
In May, Altman testified before Congress with a similarly sober message about AI products, including the latest version of ChatGPT called GPT-4. He called on lawmakers to enact regulations for AI.
“GPT-4 is more likely to respond helpfully and truthfully and reject malicious requests than any other widely used model with similar capabilities,” Altman said.
“However, we believe that government intervention will be crucial to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models,” he added, suggesting the introduction of licenses or security requirements necessary for AI models to operate.