OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Fired, Accused of Misleading the Board

Sam Altman was fired from his position as CEO of OpenAI on Friday, according to a company announcement.

In a statement released by OpenAI, the company says the move comes after a “deliberative review process by the board of directors,” which reportedly concluded that Altman had not been “consistently candid” in his communications with them. As a result, the board said it no longer had confidence in the former CEO’s future.

Why was Sam Altman fired?

“Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process conducted by the Board of Directors, which concluded that he had not always been candid in his communications with the Board of Directors, thereby harming to his ability to carry out his responsibilities. The Board of Directors no longer has confidence in his ability to continue to lead OpenAI,” the full statement read.

This move is a bit surprising, as Altman was considered one of the biggest faces of OpenAI. Under Altman’s reign as CEO, the company launched the incredibly popular ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) chatbot in 2022, which immediately saw the company surge in popularity.

Altman was one of OpenAI’s original board members when the company was founded in 2015 alongside Elon Musk and was one of its earliest backers, including Greg Brockman (who is stepping down also from the company, according to OpenAI), Musk, Jessica Livingston, Peter Thiel, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Infosys and YC Research.

According to Microsoft in a statement to The Verge, the company will continue to partner with OpenAI. “We have a long-term partnership with OpenAI, and Microsoft remains committed to Mira and her team as we bring this new era of AI to our customers,” said Microsoft spokesperson Frank Shaw.