Altman has lost the trust of the board of directors, according to an unusually sharply worded statement from Open AI. The position of CEO is temporarily taken over by technology director Mira Murati. What led to the dismissal is still unclear.
Sam Altman co-founded Open AI. Now he has been fired as CEO.
Carlos Barria / Reuters
The tech industry went into the weekend with a bang. Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of Open AI and one of the most prominent figures in the world of artificial intelligence (AI), has to unexpectedly leave his post. Open AI announced this in a blog post on Friday afternoon.
After a review process, Open AI’s board of directors concluded that Altman had not been consistently open in his communications. This made it impossible for the committee to fulfill its responsibilities. “The board of directors no longer has confidence in its ability to continue to lead Open AI,” the startup said in unusually sharp words.
Altman helped AI achieve a breakthrough
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) Altman wrote: “I loved my time at Open AI.” It was a transformative experience for him personally and, he hoped, for the world. But above all, he loved working with such talented people. “I will say more about what happens next later,” he continued.
Mira Murati, the previous head of technology at Open AI, will take over as CEO on a temporary basis with immediate effect until a long-term successor can be found. Greg Brockman, another co-founder and chairman of Open AI’s board of directors, is also stepping down. He made the decision “based on today’s news,” he said he wrote on X.
38-year-old Sam Altman became the face of the AI boom last year. At the end of November 2022, Open AI launched the generative AI-based chatbot Chat-GPT under his leadership and catapulted the technology into the general public. The image generator Dall-E is also very popular. Almost all major tech companies have now reacted and launched their own AI offerings that work in a similar way.
Altman turned the startup, founded in 2015, into a multibillion-dollar company whose products say they are used by 100 million people every month. According to Bloomberg news agency, Open AI was on track to generate $1 billion in annual revenue. The company recently held talks about selling employee shares to investors at a valuation of $86 billion, three times its valuation earlier this year.
No influence on partnership with Microsoft
Microsoft, which has invested $13 billion in Open AI and owns 49 percent of the startup, said Altman’s departure would have no impact on the partnership between the two companies. “We have a long-term partnership with Open AI, and Microsoft remains committed to Mira and her team as we bring the next era of AI to our customers,” it said in a statement. Based on its partnership with Open AI, Microsoft has now built generative AI into almost all of its products, such as the Bing search engine and Office products.
Altman’s departure is an abrupt break. On November 6th, he was on stage at the first Open AI developer conference in San Francisco, where he presented a number of innovations. On Thursday he also spoke at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference on the topic of AI.
What exactly led to Altman’s firing remains unclear. The step was also a surprise for Open AI employees. He was still sending emails on Friday morning, reports Bloomberg, citing sources from the company.