Sam Altman to return as CEO of OpenAI

Less than a week after letting go of Sam Altman, OpenAI has now announced an agreement with Altman to reinstate him as CEO.

"We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo. We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this," said the company in a post on X.

Altman confirmed the development on messaging platform X.

"I love OpenAI, and everything I’ve done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together. When I decided to join Microsoft on Sunday evening, it was clear that was the best path for me and the team. With the new board and with Satya’s support, I’m looking forward to returning to OpenAI and building on our strong partnership with Microsoft."

Greg Brockman, Co-founder of OpenAI, posted on X and said, "Returning to OpenAI & getting back to coding tonight."

Meanwhile, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella emphasised the importance of stable and effective governance on X.

"We believe this is a first essential step on a path to more stable, well-informed, and effective governance. Sam, Greg, and I have talked and agreed they have a key role to play along with the OAI leadership team in ensuring Open AI continues to thrive and build on its mission. We look forward to building on our strong partnership and delivering the value of this next generation of AI to our customers and partners," he said.

A report by Bloomberg on Tuesday (November 21) had hinted at ongoing discussions within the OpenAI board to bring back the top executive. The report mentioned talks between Altman, interim CEO Emmett Shear, and board member Adam D'Angelo.

In a dramatic development on Friday last week, Altman, the former president of Y Combinator, was dismissed from his role as CEO of OpenAI by the company's board of directors. At OpenAI, Altman was responsible for creations such as ChatGPT, GPT-4, and DALL-E 3.

Later, on Monday, Nadella announced that Altman and Brockman would lead a new advanced AI research team at Microsoft.

(The copy has been updated with new author and content)