Sam Altman is back in the building at OpenAI for the final stretch of negotiations for his potential return as CEO after being unceremoniously fired by the four-member board on Friday.
As The Verge reports, a source close to Altman stated on Sunday that he had once again set a 5PM PT deadline to resolve the situation, as he did the day before. There was a big show of heart emoji support Saturday night, meant to demonstrate how many people would leave for a new company with him.
OpenAI’s largest investor, Microsoft, said in a statement shortly after Altman’s firing that the company “remains committed” to its partnership with the AI firm. However, OpenAI’s investors weren’t given advance warning or opportunity to weigh in on the board’s decision to remove Altman. As the face of the company and the most prominent voice in AI, his removal throws the future of OpenAI into uncertainty at a time when rivals are racing to catch up with the unprecedented rise of ChatGPT.
One big condition of Altman’s return is that the existing board (who abruptly fired him) has to step down. The existing board has to make some hard decisions about who will replace them, which appears to be the sticking point.
OpenAI’s current board consists of chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, former GeoSim Systems CEO Tasha McCauley, and Helen Toner, the director of strategy at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. Unlike traditional companies, the board isn’t tasked with maximizing shareholder value, and none of them hold equity in OpenAI. Instead, their stated mission is to ensure the creation of “broadly beneficial” artificial general intelligence, or AGI.
Sutskever, who also co-founded OpenAI and leads its researchers, was instrumental in the ousting of Altman last week, according to multiple sources. His role in the coup suggests a power struggle between the research and product sides of the company, the sources say.
Microsoft’s Satya Nadella is reportedly mediating the discussion between Altman, former OpenAI president Greg Brockman, and the four current board members as they attempt to select a new board. Reportedly Microsoft would very much like to wrap this up before the stock market opens on Monday morning. (According to The Verge, Microsoft declined to comment; OpenAI’s communications team isn’t returning calls.)
Sunday’s 5PM deadline was meant to be a hard deadline, per the source close to Altman. However, if a deal isn’t reached, things will reportedly take “a different path,” and extend through this week and perhaps much longer.
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