The Winners and Losers of OpenAI’s Wild Weekend

For a while this weekend, it looked as if Sam Altman might return as a conquering hero to OpenAI, the company whose board had fired him as chief executive on Friday.

It would have been another shocking twist in a saga that was already full of them. And Mr. Altman had a lot of leverage. OpenAI employees had rallied behind him since his firing, and OpenAI’s investors were pushing the board to bring him back. Billions of dollars — and, possibly, the trajectory of the entire A.I. industry — hung on the fate of the board’s decision, and many expected them to cave under pressure and reverse themselves.

Instead, the board held firm, rejecting Mr. Altman’s return and affirming in a late-night memo to employees on Sunday that removing him was “necessary to preserve the board’s ability to execute its responsibilities and advance the mission of this organization.” It appointed Emmett Shear, the former Twitch boss, as interim chief.

Hours later, Satya Nadella, the chief executive of Microsoft, announced that Mr. Altman and his top lieutenant, Greg Brockman, would join the tech giant to lead a new A.I. research division.

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