The Shake-up at OpenAI Reshapes the Industry’s Global Order

What next for an A.I. leader? Over just three days, the landscape for artificial intelligence has been reshaped drastically. On Friday morning, Sam Altman was the C.E.O. of OpenAI, the leader in commercializing generative A.I. through ChatGPT. By Monday, he had not only been fired by his board — he had also joined Microsoft , the start-up’s biggest backer.

What happened is more than just a juicy corporate tale. At stake are the fates of major A.I. players like OpenAI and Microsoft. And it’s a reminder of serious divides within the A.I. community — and questions about how that industry is led.

A recap:

OpenAI’s board fired Altman for not being “consistently candid.” Greg Brockman, another co-founder, was stripped of his chairman title and quit. The two began pitching a new A.I. start-up that evening.

Investors in OpenAI — who have little power because of the company’s quirky corporate governance structure (more on that below) — began plotting a way for Altman to return, with the encouragement of OpenAI executives. Altman returned to the office, marking the moment with a selfie that went viral .

Talks to bring Altman back broke down, with OpenAI’s board eventually naming Emmett Shear , the former C.E.O. of the streaming service Twitch, as its interim leader, replacing Mira Murati, the company’s C.T.O. who had replaced Altman.

Altman and Brockman are joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced research lab, and are likely to hire several former colleagues. (Some OpenAI employees workers wrote on X that “OpenAI is nothing without its people,” posts that Altman liked.)

OpenAI’s future is much murkier. According to The Information, rivals are looking to pick off workers. And a tender offer for OpenAI shares held by employees at an $86 billion valuation appears in doubt.

It’s unclear how much OpenAI’s strategy will change. Altman disagreed with board members — particularly Ilya Sutskever, another co-founder and the company’s chief scientist — about how quickly to commercialize new technologies. Sutskever, like Elon Musk and the A.I. pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, is deeply worried that A.I. could threaten humanity, and may now push the company to move much more slowly.