Sam Altman and Greg Brockman have announced their return to OpenAI. Last Friday, the company’s board had unexpectedly fired Altman, and co-founder and president Brockman resigned upon learning the news.
The two had been announced to be forming a new team at Microsoft, a company that has heavily invested in OpenAI.
“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 msft on sun evening, it was clear that was the best path for me and the team. with the new board and w satya’s support, i’m looking forward to returning to openai, and building on our strong partnership with msft,” Altman wrote on X.
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In addition to Altman returning to his role as CEO, OpenAI also announced that it would be forming a new board of directors, replacing the one that had kicked off these events in the first place. The new interim board will include Bret Taylor, previous co-CEO of Salesforce, as chair, Larry Summers, president at Harvard; and Adam D’Angelo, CEO of Quora.
D’Angelo is the only member from the initial board to stay, with Ilya Sutskever, Tasha McCauley, and Helen Toner all leaving.
“We are encouraged by the changes to the OpenAI board. 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 OAI 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,” Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, wrote in a statement.
And in addition to getting Altman and Brockman back and replacing the board, OpenAI also announced some product news. It revealed that ChatGPT with voice is now available for free to all users.
In a post on X announcing this, the company also joked about the events of the past few days in a demo video with a woman asking: “It’s been a long night for the team and we’re hungry. How many 16” pizzas should I order for 778 people?”