OpenAI fires co-founder and CEO Sam Altman for allegedly lying to company board

Sam Altman, the chief executive and co-founder of OpenAI, was ousted for allegedly lying to the board of his company, according to an announcement issued Friday.

The board “no longer has confidence in his ability to lead” and said new leadership is “necessary” as the company moves forward, OpenAI said in a statement posted on its website. He is likewise leaving the company’s board.

“Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities,” the board’s statement said. What Altman had allegedly hidden from his company’s board was not clear.

Altman tweeted a sunny message after the combative announcement.

“I loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people. will have more to say about what’s next later,” he wrote.

Mira Murati, OpenAI’s CTO, will become interim CEO in his place, according to the statement. Murati has been a part of the San Francisco-based company’s leadership for five years.

Altman’s dismissal is a major shakeup in the world of AI. He became one of the most important people in the field after his company released ChatGPT in November 2022, a generative AI chatbot that accrued more than 100 million users in less than a year.

The 38-year-old has led efforts to create “artificial general intelligence”, or AGI, an AI system capable of completing any task a human can achieve.

Altman helped found the company in 2015, initially as a non-profit with a $1bn endowment from high-profile backers including Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. Altman and Musk served as co-chairs with a goal “to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return”. In 2019, however, OpenAI reshaped itself around a “capped profit” model with Altman as the CEO.

After releasing ChatGPT last year, Altman was thrust into the spotlight. He has been among the most vocal proponents of artificial intelligence, but has also led calls for regulation and warned that the technology comes with risks as it reshapes society. He testified before the US Congress in May about what form AI legislation should take.

On Thursday, he spoke at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in San Francisco where he argued that AI will be “the greatest leap forward of any of the big technological revolutions we’ve had so far”.

He also acknowledged the need for guardrails.

“I really think the world is going to rise to the occasion and everybody wants to do the right thing,” Altman said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report