In November 2023, the board of directors of the productive artificial intelligence company OpenAI made a sudden decision to fire Sam Altman, CEO and co-founder, and removed him from his position on the board. Later, with most employees siding with Altman and pushing to bring him back, OpenAI recalled Altman as CEO after five days, and the board members who voted to fire him agreed to leave.
OpenAI said it would conduct an investigation into what happened during those five chaotic days, and announced late Friday that the third-party group conducting the investigation had completed its work. As a result, it was decided to bring Altman back to the company’s board of directors. Additionally, the board “expressed full confidence” in continuing to retain Altman as OpenAI CEO and Greg Brockman as Chairman.
In the blog post It was also announced that three new board members were added. These include former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former EVP and General Counsel of Sony, Nicole Seligman, and current CEO of Instacart, Fidji Simo.
OpenAI said it will add some improvements to the company’s functioning. This includes the addition of new corporate governance principles, an anonymous tip line and more.
As for the investigation into Altman’s firing in November, OpenAI said WilmerHale, the third-party group investigating the matter, conducted ‘dozens of interviews’ with previous members of the company’s board and others and reviewed 30,000 documents.”
Ultimately, the blog post stated that, according to WilmerHale, a lack of trust had developed between the previous board members and Altman: “WilmerHale made the previous Board’s decision in a shortened time frame, without prior notice to key stakeholders and without a full investigation or disclosure to Mr. Altman of the previous Board’s concerns.” He determined that he implemented it without giving him the opportunity to express it.
WilmerHale noted that OpenAI’s previous board members “acted within broad discretion” to fire Altman but said his “conduct did not warrant removal.”
