Sam Altman has returned to OpenAI as the chief executive officer (CEO) less than a week after he was fired by the start-up company’s board of directors.
Altman’s return comes after immense pressure was exerted on the board by both OpenAI’s employees and its investors, both of whom threatened to quit over the firing.
Additionally, OpenAI has announced major changes to its governance, with former Salesforce CEO Bret Taylor and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers joining OpenAI’s board of directors. Taylor will serve as board chair.
Earlier this week, hundreds of employees at OpenAI signed a letter saying that if the board didn’t bring Altman back, they would leave the company.
The return of Altman follows a wild few days where Microsoft hired Altman and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman to run a new artificial intelligence (AI) lab at the tech giant.
At the same time, OpenAI’s board hired ex-Twitch CEO Emmett Shear as Altman’s replacement in the CEO role.
Now, Shear is out as CEO at OpenAI and Altman is back at the company he helped to co-found.
In a social media post, Microsoft praised the changes that OpenAI has made to its board of directors and said that it will continue to work with both Altman and the company.
Microsoft has invested more than $10 billion U.S. in OpenAI and uses its artificial intelligence technology across its suite of products and services.
Altman has led OpenAI since 2019 and served as a public face of artificial intelligence over the past year after the launch of the company’s ChatGPT AI chatbot.
Original investors in OpenAI include LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, who reportedly put $1 billion U.S. of his own money into the project.
OpenAI is a private company. Its stock is not traded on a public exchange.
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