OpenAI Bringing Back Sam Altman as CEO Days After Firing

In another plot twist, artificial intelligence start-up OpenAI , the parent company of ChatGPT, said that co-founder Sam Altman was set to return as its CEO after days of drama following a showdown between him and the company’s board that fired him.

“We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D’Angelo,” OpenAI said in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, overnight. “We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this.”

Taylor is the former co-CEO of cloud-based software company Salesforce, while Summers is a former Treasury Secretary. D’Angelo, the CEO of social question-and-answer website and online knowledge market Quora, will be the only member of OpenAI’s previous board to stay in place.

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The previous board and the returning CEO agreed to also conduct an independent probe into Altman’s conduct, last week’s board decision to oust him and the aftermath, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a person familiar with the situation.

Altman said on X following the company announcement: “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.”

In recent days, the future of artificial intelligence research seemed up for grabs following Altman’s surprise firing on Friday afternoon, with OpenAI’s board saying it “no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI” after finding that he “was not consistently candid in his communications with the board.”

This led to various executive moves. Early this week , Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the technology giant had hired Altman and his top deputy Greg Brockman, the co-founder and president of OpenAI, “to lead a new advanced AI research team.” Meanwhile, OpenAI said that Emmett Shear, the former CEO of video streaming site Twitch, would be joining it as interim CEO after it initially named Mira Murati, the company’s chief technology officer, interim CEO.

OpenAI, founded in 2015, previously had a board consisting of chair Brockman, OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, D’Angelo, technology entrepreneur Tasha McCauley and Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology’s Helen Toner.