Sam Altman, the fired CEO of OpenAI. Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images
In a letter to the OpenAI board, 490 employees demand that the fired CEO Sam Altman be reinstated.
Among the signatories are CTO Mira Murati and COO Brad Lightcap. The employees are also calling for the resignation of the board of directors.
Despite reports of his possible return, Altman has moved to Microsoft to lead a new AI team. OpenAI employees are now threatening to quit to follow him to Microsoft.
This is a machine translation of an article from our US colleagues at Insider. It was automatically translated and checked by a real editor. We welcome feedback at the end of the article.
Nearly 500 OpenAI employees have threatened to quit unless all current board members resign. They are also calling for former CEO Sam Altman to be reinstated. However, he has now switched to Microsoft.
In a letter to the board, 490 OpenAI employees, including CTO Mira Murati and COO Brad Lightcap, said Altman’s firing “jeopardized all of this work and undermined our mission and company” and that they were resigning to join the ex- OpenAI CEO will join Microsoft if the board does not resign. The letter was first sent by „Wired“ published on Monday. Tech journalist Kara Swisher also shared the letter online and said the list of signatories was growing.
“Your conduct has made it clear that you do not have the authority to oversee OpenAI,” the letter said.
Signatories to the letter include OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, who announced on X, that he “deeply regrets” having been involved in Altman’s firing.
Jan Leike, who co-led OpenAI’s “superalignment” team with Sutskever, also posted on others posted the same statement on X.
The letter to the board also says Murati, who was initially named as interim CEO, was also replaced “against the best interests of the company.”
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The letter to the board is the latest development after a weekend of chaos and confusion at the AI startup. Altman was fired as CEO of OpenAI effective immediately on Friday in a drastic decision by the board. Late Sunday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that Altman and former OpenAI president Greg Brockman would join a new AI team at Microsoft after efforts by investors and current employees to bring him back as OpenAI CEO failed.
OpenAI then appointed Emmett Shear, the former CEO of Twitch and an advocate for slower AI development, as interim CEO. Shear took over the role from Mira Murati, the former CTO of OpenAI, who had publicly supported Altman. However, the OpenAI board faced enormous backlash from employees: some quit to follow him to Microsoft and posted public statements of support on X.
In its initial statement announcing Altman’s firing, the board said he had not been “consistently open” and that it no longer had confidence in his ability to lead the company.
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OpenAI and Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider outside of normal working hours.
This text was translated from English. The original article in English here.