The OpenAI Power Struggle: Inside Sam Altman’s Brief Ouster

An excerpt from The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future sheds new light on why OpenAI’s board briefly ousted CEO Sam Altman in 2023.

According to author and Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey, tensions grew as board members discovered concerns surrounding Altman’s leadership. One major issue was the OpenAI Startup Fund, which was initially believed to be company-owned but was actually under Altman’s personal control.

Meanwhile, co-founder Ilya Sutskever and CTO Mira Murati gathered evidence of what they viewed as Altman’s toxic and deceptive behavior, including screenshots from Murati’s Slack messages. One incident involved Altman allegedly misrepresenting legal guidance, claiming that OpenAI’s legal team had determined GPT-4 Turbo did not require review by the joint safety board—only for the company’s top lawyer to deny ever making such a statement.

After Sutskever presented this evidence to the board, they decided to remove Altman and appoint Murati as interim CEO. However, this move quickly backfired. OpenAI employees—Sutskever and Murati among them—signed a letter demanding Altman’s reinstatement. Ultimately, Altman returned as CEO, while both Sutskever and Murati departed to launch their own startups.