OpenAI said "he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board"
Sam Altman is out as the CEO of OpenAI after losing the support of the board, the company said in a blog post. Mira Murati, OpenAI’s chief technology officer, was named interim CEO effective immediately, and a search is underway to identify a permanent successor.
“Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities,” the blog post announced. “The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.”
OpenAI’s mission is “to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all humanity,” and the board says that it remains committed to it. The board consists of OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, independent directors Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, technology entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, and Helen Toner, a director of strategy at Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology.
As part of the transition, Greg Brockman will remain in his role as president of the company but will be stepping down as chairman of the board.
Altman co-founded OpenAI, which was formerly a nonprofit company, alongside other Silicon Valley titans including Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Reid Hoffman, in 2015. The release of ChatGPT nearly a year ago led to a boom in the generative AI industry, with companies large and small now trying to figure out how to stuff AI into their processes and tools.
Altman, in his time as CEO, has espoused the existential risks of AI and has advocated for AI regulation. This past summer he went on a world tour to meet with leaders, from the Indian prime minister to South Korea’s president, to talk about AI’s potential and risks. Just a week ago, he hosted the company’s first developer’s day conference.
Mira Murati joined OpenAI in 2018 as its vice president of applied AI and has since been promoted to CTO. She has worked on bringing AI products like ChatGPT, Dall-E, and GPT-4 to the public and is overseeing OpenAI’s partnership with Microsoft $MSFT.
Murati grew up in Albania and studied mechanical engineering at Dartmouth. Before OpenAI, she had a stint as a senior product manager at Tesla $TSLA, where she worked on AI applications. What drew her to OpenAI, Murati said in an interview with Fortune in October, was the company’s belief that it can achieve artificial general intelligence—or, as OpenAI puts it, “AI systems that are generally smarter than humans.”
OpenAI, which is one of the most valuable startups in the world, has about 500 employees.
Late Friday, following the company’s announcement of Altman’s departure, Altman himself posted on X $TWTR: “I loved my time at OpenAI. It was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all I loved working with such talented people.”
“Will have more to say about what’s next later,” he added.
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