Sam Altman Returns As OpenAI CEO Within 5 Days

OpenAI, an American artificial intelligence research company, is in the limelight in recent days over Samuel Harris Altman’s departure from the company.

In the midst of chaos, OpenAI laid off Sam Altman and others. Later on, OpenAI’s biggest backer, Microsoft, said it would hire Sam Altman to head up a new in-house AI team. However, the story does not end here. After Sam Altman’s departure from the company, almost all OpenAI employees threatened to quit the company and join Microsoft.

Altman’s sudden exit from OpenAI shocked the tech world. He also joined Microsoft as a lead of an advanced AI research team. Nearly 740 out of 770 employees at OpenAI threatened to quit if the board of the artificial intelligence company didn’t bring back Sam Altman. 

OpenAI has now agreed to bring back Sam Altman as CEO. OpenAI wrote on social media platform X, previously Twitter, “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.”

Sam Altman returns as OpenAI CEO

Sam Altman has confirmed that he is returning to OpenAI. He wrote on X, “I’m looking forward to returning to OpenAI, and building on our strong partnership with msft (Microsoft).”

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who had recently welcomed Sam Altman into the company, said that the decision was taken to build a “more stable, well-informed, and effective governance” in OpenAI.

What happened to Sam Altman?

Sam Altman was fired by OpenAI’s board on Friday over disagreements on development and monetization of artificial intelligence. Later on, the board named a new leader, former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear.

Mira Murati, who was made the interim CEO after Altman’s departure from the company, and Ilya Sutskever, who played a major role in Altman’s ousting as CEO, said that they regretted the decision to fire Sam Altman.

Microsoft, Salesforce, and Nvidia – American multinational technology companies – provided job offers to OpenAI employees as they were seeking to hire new employees. Kevin Scott, chief technology officer (CTO) of Microsoft and Marc Benioff, the founder and CEO of Salesforce, offered jobs to OpenAI employees. 

This is not the first time that OpenAI fired its CEO. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a co-founder of the non-profit, was once OpenAI’s co-chair. Later on, he left the company over disagreement with the board members.