In a sudden development that has sent ripples across the tech industry, Sam Altman was fired as CEO of OpenAI, on Saturday, November 18. The Chief technology officer Mira Murati has been appointed as interim CEO. OpenAI is the developer of Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT, which is leading the massive AI momentum globally. At a time when the AI chatbot ChatGPT reached 100 million weekly active users, the company’s board said that it “no longer has confidence in his [Sam Altman] ability to continue leading OpenAI.” Soon after Altman was fired, OpenAI President and co-founder Greg Brockman also stepped down as chairman of the board but remains at the company.
According to media reports, Altman may have tried to circumvent the board in a major deal. “It’s possible that Altman — and potentially OpenAI President Greg Brockman, who stepped down as chairman simultaneously, then resigned — wanted to make a bold move that he knew the board would not like,” according to a TechCrunch report. According to tech news website Semafor, Altman has been in the process of raising a venture capital fund to focus on “hard tech”. If he was negotiating some deal, like an acquisition or more exclusive integration, it could also have caused the board to bristle, either at the idea itself or at being excluded, the report mentioned.
