Economist Larry Summers joins the board of OpenAI as ousted CEO Sam Altman returns

CNN  — 

Economist Larry Summers, the former Obama and Clinton official, is joining an initial, revamped OpenAI board, as the company welcomes back CEO Sam Altman just days after he was ousted by the previous board.

The addition of former Clinton Treasury Secretary Summers — as well as former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor as chair and the retention of Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo — suggests a major change in the board.

Summers and Taylor, for example, both sit on other corporate boards.

Those three directors have significantly more experience than much of the previous board, which abruptly fired Altman late on Friday only to see an employee revolt and wide-ranging repercussions in the tech and business worlds. Days later, OpenAI said it had reached an agreement in principle for Altman to return.

The company, which posted the news in the early hours of Tuesday morning, gave few details about what the board structure would ultimately look like, as well as how many members it might eventually include. Nor did the company elaborate on what it meany by calling the three-person board “initial.”

Instead, the organization said it was working on what happens from here.

“We are collaborating to figure out the details,” the company posted on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “Thank you so much for your patience through this.”