“Sam Altman Is Still Trying to Return As OpenAI CEO”, 2023-11-20 ():
Sam Altman’s surprise move to Microsoft after his shock firing at OpenAI isn’t a done deal. He and co-founder Greg Brockman are still willing to return to OpenAI if the remaining board members who fired him step aside, multiple sources tell The Verge.
…Altman, former president Brockman, and the company’s investors are still trying to find a graceful exit for the board, say multiple sources with direct knowledge of the situation. The sources characterized the hiring announcement by Microsoft, which needed to have a resolution to the crisis before the stock market opened on Monday, as a “holding pattern.”
…New CEO Emmett Shear has so far been unable to get written documentation of the board’s detailed reasoning for firing Altman, which also hasn’t been shared with the company’s investors, according to people familiar with the situation. He said in a note to employees Sunday night that his first order of business would be to “hire an independent investigator to dig into the entire process leading up to this point and generate a full report.”
[Note the careful phrasing: “written documentation” of “detailed reasoning”.]
Moments after this story was first published, Altman said in another Twitter post that his “top priority remains to ensure OpenAI continues to thrive”, and that he and Microsoft “are committed to fully providing continuity of operations to our partners and customers.”
…Update November 20th, 6:18PM ET: After this story was published, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella appeared on CNBC and Bloomberg TV. When asked directly by CNBC’s Jon Fortt if Sam Altman and OpenAI’s staffers would join Microsoft, Nadella said “that is for the OpenAI board and management and employees to choose.” He followed by saying that Microsoft “chose to explicitly partner with OpenAI [and] obviously that depends on the people at OpenAI staying there or coming to Microsoft, so I’m open to both options.”
On the topic of whether Microsoft needs a seat on OpenAI’s board, he said that “it’s clear something has to change around the governance—we will have a good dialogue with their board on that, and walk through that as that evolves.”
On Bloomberg TV, Nadella told Emily Chang that “surprises are bad” and Microsoft will “definitely want some governance changes. This idea that changes happen without being in the loop is not good.” When Chang asked who OpenAI’s CEO would be tomorrow, Nadella laughed and said “I will leave it with OpenAI and its board.”