Updated: 11/17/2023 8.35 PM GMT-4: The President and Co-founder of OpenAI, Greg Brockman, has resigned as well in a very public fashion on Twitter.

After learning today’s news, this is the message I sent to the OpenAI team: https://t.co/NMnG16yFmm pic.twitter.com/8x39P0ejOM

— Greg Brockman (@gdb) November 18, 2023

Meanwhile, Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft posted the following, apparently in response to the recent developments:

As you saw at Microsoft Ignite this week, we're continuing to rapidly innovate for this era of AI, with over 100 announcements across the full tech stack – from AI systems, models, and tools in Azure, to Copilot. Most importantly, we're committed to delivering all of this to our…

— Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) November 17, 2023

[/Update]

A shocking event transpired a few moments ago, with a blog post from OpenAI announcing that Sam Altman, the CEO of the firm that founded ChatGPT, is no longer the Chief Executive and has been relinquished of his duties immediately. While there might have been several reasons for removing him from this illustrious position, the announcement claims that the company’s board no longer felt confident in Altman’s capabilities.

Mira Murati, OpenAI’s Chief Technology Officer, will run the company as an interim CEO with immediate effect

The blog post wrote that Sam Altman was not consistently candid in his communications with other board members, making things difficult in running OpenAI. With the decision taken by the board, in addition to departing as CEO, Altman will leave the board of directors and be replaced by Mira Murati, OpenAI’s Chief Technical Officer, as interim CEO with immediate effect. OpenAI has not announced Altman’s successor, so it appears that Murati will spearhead the company for the foreseeable future.

“The board of directors of OpenAI, Inc., the 501(c)(3) that acts as the overall governing body for all OpenAI activities, today announced that Sam Altman will depart as CEO and leave the board of directors. Mira Murati, the company’s chief technology officer, will serve as interim CEO, effective immediately.”

https://twitter.com/sama/status/1725631621511184771?s=20

Altman’s removal as OpenAI’s CEO comes at the most unexpected time, but it is possible that the former Chief Executive made other board members nervous by making his own series of decisions, risky or not. Though the complete details of Altman’s behavior have not been mentioned in the post, it does state that the board no longer possessed confidence in his capabilities regarding leading and running OpenAI.

“Mr. 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 board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.”

Altman stated in a post published on X that he loved his time at OpenAI, but what he loved the most was working with talented individuals. Though the former CEO has not stated what his future plans are, he hints that he will reveal more details in the future. Also, we are confident of finding out what missteps he took that forced OpenAI's board to take such an extreme step, but in the future, so stay tuned for more information.

News Source: OpenAI