Sam Altman will return as CEO of OpenAI, the startup said early Wednesday morning on X, formerly known as Twitter. The move following immense pressure from employees and investors on the board that ousted him less than a week ago.
Former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers will join OpenAI’s board, the Microsoft-backed startup said. Adam D’Angelo, co-founder and CEO of question-and-answer startup Quora, will remain on the board.
“We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this,” OpenAI said in the X post.
On Monday, hundreds of employees, including co-founder and board member Ilya Sutskever, signed a letter saying that, if the board didn’t resign and bring Altman back, the overwhelming majority would move to work with him at Microsoft.
Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, said a post on X on Monday that Altman and his co-founder Greg Brockman would join Microsoft to form a new AI lab.
That followed an announcement late Sunday that OpenAI had hired ex-Twitch CEO Emmett Shear as Altman’s interim replacement. Originally, the board had said OpenAI technology chief Mira Murati would assume that role, but she soon joined the parade of employees calling for Altman’s return.
The rapid reinstatement of Altman began to look like a possibility on Saturday as news surfaced that a group of prominent investors, including Microsoft, Tiger Global, Thrive Capital and Sequoia Capital were working to reverse the board’s decision from a day earlier. None of those firms had board seats, and they were caught unaware by the decision.
In a post on X late Saturday night, Altman wrote, “i love the openai team so much.” Brockman, who quit the company after the board removed him as chairman alongside the ouster of Altman, reposted the comment with a heart symbol. Other OpenAI employees did the same.
OpenAI, which was reportedly in talks as recently as last month to sell employee shares to investors at an $86 billion…
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