Sam Altman’s final days as OpenAI CEO show no signs of trouble brewing

Silicon Valley was shocked by the sudden exit of Sam Altman from OpenAI on Friday. Altman, 38, was not only the CEO of the hottest startup on the planet, but he also emerged as the face of generative AI after his company’s ChatGPIT chatbot went viral late last year.

From the outside, there were some signs of technical challenges at OpenAI, but no indication that tensions were emerging in the boardroom and C-suite. Altman was still out and about, campaigning on the value of advanced artificial intelligence, while also warning of its potential harms and advocating for regulation.

Just last month, reports emerged that OpenAI was in talks with investors to sell employee shares at a staggering valuation of $86 billion. This comes after tech valuations have recovered dramatically over the past 18 months from lows in the decade-long bull market, driven by cheap money and a lot of FOMO (fear of missing out).

OpenAI was the darling of the industry in difficult times. Microsoft Billions of dollars were pouring in. The company topped Disruptor 50 list, which was published in May. Shortly before the list was revealed, Altman told, “I think we’re deeply immersed in a new tech wave and I think it’s the biggest wave we’ve seen in some time.”

All of this made Altman’s exit difficult to understand, and some in the tech community were also compared to step towards of apple Steve Jobs was fired in 1985. In a statement on its website, OpenAI said, “The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue to lead OpenAI.” The company appointed Mira Muratti, who was chief technology officer, as interim CEO.

If you’ve followed Altman over the past two weeks, you may have noticed an industry leader at the center of the action. Here’s a brief timeline of the days leading up to Altman’s departure:

Altman took the stage OpenAI’s DevDay event in San Francisco, where they announced GPT-4 Turbo, the company’s most powerful AI model. Users were also given access to all of OpenAI’s tools within ChatGPT, such as its image-generator DALL-E and PDF uploads.

At the event, Altman said that prices for OpenAI’s software would be cut and individual users could customize ChatGPT. They also unveiled an OpenAI App Store, which is an additional way the company and its investors can monetize their products.

In a surprise appearance, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella joined Altman on stage to discuss the future of OpenAI and their partnership. According to PitchBook, Microsoft invested an additional $10 billion earlier this year, its largest AI investment through 2023.

“I think we have the best partnership in technology,” Altman told Nadella on stage. “I’m excited about us building AGI together,” he said, referring to artificial general intelligence.

Chatgpt crashed temporarily in the morning. The chatbot told users that “ChatGPT is currently at capacity” and the update page called it a “major outage.” After a little over an hour, the problem was fixed before difficulties were encountered again during the day.

OpenAI said in the evening that its issues were related to a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.

“We are dealing with periodic outages due to unusual traffic patterns caused by the DDoS attack,” the company said.

The problems persisted until the next day before being fixed.

altman Posted on x, formerly Twitter, that there will be a ban on signing up for ChatGPT Plus. He said requests have increased following Devade’s announcements and that usage has “exceeded our capacity and we want to make sure everyone has a good experience.”

Altman appeared at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco, speaking on AI.

On Friday at 3:28 p.m. ET, OpenAI published a blog post announcing Altman’s dismissal. Additionally, the company said that OpenAI President Greg Brockman is being stripped of his role as chairman of the board, but will remain as an executive.

Here’s what happened next:

Altman made his first public statement about his departure, writing on X that his experience at the company was “a little transformative for me personally and hopefully for the world.”

brockman announced at

In an X post, Brockman provided a Detailed description of Altman’s removal.

On Thursday night, Altman received a message from OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, asking if they could talk the next afternoon, he said. On Friday afternoon, Altman joined a Google Meet with OpenAI board members Sutskever, Tasha McCauley, Adam D’Angelo and Helen Toner, Brockman wrote. Brockman, who was chairman of the board at this time, was not there.

At the meeting, Sutskever told Altman that he was out of the CEO position. Shortly thereafter, Sutskever informed Brockman that he was being removed as president but could remain president. OpenAI’s blog post was released “at approximately the same time,” Brockman wrote.

He said it appeared that Murati knew about the move only the night before. Altman reposted Brockman’s account of the events.

Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap Sent a memo to OpenAI employees addressing the firings. Lightcap said everyone was surprised by the board’s decision and said Muratti “has our full support as CEO.”

“We can say with certainty that the board’s decision was not made in bad faith or in response to anything related to our financial, business, security, or security/privacy practices,” Lightcap wrote.

Watch: OpenAI says Sam Altman is stepping down as CEO