(CNN) — Twelve days after OpenAI fired Sam Altman as CEO, the company officially announced that it had rehired him.
The company also said it has a new board of directors consisting of Chairman Brett Taylor, former co-CEO of Salesforce; Former Secretary of the TreasuryLarry Summers; and CEO of Quora, adam d’angelo, He is the only CEO remaining from the board that ousted Altman on November 17. Microsoft, the majority shareholder, also received a non-voting observer seat on the board after the company hired Altman and the former OpenAI company. Chairman Greg Brockman, but lost them back to OpenAI two days later, an outcome that CEO Satya Nadella said he agreed with.
OpenAI rated the new board as “seed,” indicating it will add more directors in the future.
File photo: Sam Altman attends the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in San Francisco, California, US. November 16, 2023. Reuters/Carlos Barria
In a post on the OpenAI blog, Altman thanked the previous board that fired him for his contributions to the company. He also brought back Mira Moratti to his position as the company’s chief technology officer. Moratti was named interim CEO for just over a day until the company announced that former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear would take over as CEO, a position he held for less than a week.
The chaos at OpenAI has led the vast majority of the company’s 800 employees to threaten to quit unless Altman and Brockman are reinstated. One prominent signatory was Ilya Sutskever, a former board member who played a key role in Altman’s ouster. Sustkever later apologized for his actions and said he regretted the decision.
Sustkever’s role as chief scientist at OpenAI appears shaky. He has been left out of Altman’s leadership team.
“I love and respect Elijah, and believe he is a guiding light on the field and a gem of a human being,” Altman wrote in a blog post. “I hold no ill will towards him. “Although Elijah will no longer serve on the Board of Directors, we look forward to continuing our working relationship and discussing how he can continue his work at OpenAI.”
Altman reserved most of the praise for Brockman, who returned to the company after his resignation. He also said that they will formalize in the company’s organizational structure the fact that the two are “partners in the management of this company.”
“Thank you for everything you have done from the beginning and for how you have handled things from the moment this started and throughout the past week,” Altman wrote to Brockman.
Altman also praised the company’s employees and customers, noting that OpenAI did not lose any of them during the ordeal.
“I’m sure books will be written about this period, and I hope the first thing they say is how great the whole team was,” Altman said. “They stood firm for each other, for this company and for our mission.”
The CEO said the company must improve its management structure and appoint an independent investigator to determine what went wrong that led to Altman’s dismissal.
In a post on X, Altman acknowledged that there was a “genuine misunderstanding” between him and board members.
“For my part, it is extremely important to learn from this experience and apply those lessons as we move forward as a company,” Altman wrote in X. “I welcome the Board’s independent review of all recent events.”
