UPDATE: Nov. 20, 2023: Former OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman will join Microsoft to lead an “advanced AI research team,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Monday in statements posted to social media platforms.
Dive Brief:
- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has departed the company, effective immediately, the company announced Friday. Altman will also step down from the board of directors.
- CTO Mira Murati will step in as interim CEO, but a search process is underway to identify a permanent successor. While an earlier statement indicated Board chair, Co-Founder and President Greg Brockman would step down from the board but remain at the company, late Friday he announced his resignation. "Based on today's news, I quit," he said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
- “Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities,” the company said in the announcement. “The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.”
Dive Insight:
Altman has become a staple of the enterprise technology vendor conversation, making appearances before Congress to speak on regulation and leading OpenAI’s ChatGPT early months, which took the business world by storm.
His departure raises questions about the company’s future and stability.
OpenAI hosted its first developer conference last week, helmed by Altman, and unveiled more than a dozen upgrades to its services.
OpenAI’s longstanding partner, Microsoft, joined the conference to talk more about the partnership. Altman told Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella: “I think we have the best partnership in tech. I’m excited for us to build [artificial general intelligence] together.”
Following the conference, Altman said the company was pausing ChatGPT Plus sign-ups as the surge in usage exceeded capacity, in a statement posted to X.
“While the company has experienced dramatic growth, it remains the fundamental governance responsibility of the board to advance OpenAI’s mission and preserve the principles of its Charter,” the company said in the announcement.
