He was the AI Fanboy who could do no wrong, until Sam “Icarus” Altman flew too close to the AI Sun and the board of OpenAI clipped his wings. WTF is going on with OpenAI?

First, a tiny bit of history, then I promise we’ll get to what’s going on today, which will probably be old by the time you hear this due to the ever-changing nature of this story. If you thought things in the tech world moved fast, wait until you get a load of AI news! 

Sam Altman was 1 of 3 co-founders of OpenAI, along with Elon Musk who was a major funder of this non-profit (yes that’s right, OpenAI is actually a non-profit but this past Summer they created a for-profit corporation under their non-profit umbrella. It’s all very confusing, but stack with me). 

Sam was CEO of OpenAI, and he assumed the Steve Job’s-esque like figurehead role of being the face of AI, cozying up to world leaders and making the rounds at tech events, while rubbing shoulders with tech celebrities including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and the afore mentioned Twitter (I mean X), Tesla, and SpaceXCEO Elon Musk.

What happened on Friday, November 17 was nothing short of a Board coup. They fired Sam, and his co-founder Greg Brockman resigned in protest. And the board this all of this very underhandedly, without letting anyone know about this until nearly the exact minute news broke. This means Microsoft, who has invested $13 billion dollars in OpenAI, found out about the firing of Sam Altman when the rest of the world did; not a good way to handle investor relations if you ask me.

Then over the weekend, while heads were rolling, other investors in OpenAI got pissed and began starting rumors that Sam Altman was going to start a new AI company, and that they would all invest in it, including Microsoft. Well that news didn’t go down well with the board, who seemed to be practically light shareholder value on fire and were poised to burn the entire company down to the ground. 

It’s still not completely clear why the board of OpenAI even fired Sam Altman, but I’m guessing we’ll find out in the coming weeks. On Sunday afternoon it was reported that the board was having a change of heart, and had invited Sam back to the office to discuss resuming his role as CEO.

Apparently that meeting didn’t go as the board had planned (if they are even bothering to have any plan at this point).

As I was writing this news broke that Microsoft had actually offered both Sam Altman and Greg Brockman roles at Microsoft, which they accepted. 

Now OpenAI has announced their 3rd CEO in as many days. On Friday they fired Sam Altman, appointed then CTO Mira Murati as the role of interim CEO which it turns out she held for 2 days, before going back to her role as OpenAI’s Chief Technology Officer. This morning OpenAI announced that Emmett Shear, the former CEO of Amazon’s streaming service Twitch, will join OpenAI as the latest interim CEO. The word “interim” is doing a lot of work in that last sentence.

So what’s next for OpenAI’s revolving door of CEOs? WTF does anyone know at this point.

OpenAI executive shakeup raises concerns about the future of AI