OpenAI reinstates Sam Altman to board of directors with ‘full confidence’ after investigation

OpenAI has reinstated CEO Sam Altman to its board of directors, the company said Friday. 

“We have unanimously concluded that Sam and [OpenAI founder and president] Greg [Brockman] are the right leaders for OpenAI,” Bret Taylor, Chair of the OpenAI Board, said in a Friday blog post. 

Altman was abruptly fired in November after the artificial intelligence company said it had lost confidence in him, but he was reinstated days later following a backlash from employees, investors and Microsoft, its biggest backer. 

A majority of OpenAI employees threatened to quit and Microsoft said it would hire Altman if he left. 

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Following an investigation, it was found that Altman and OpenAI had a breakdown of trust before his firing, but that he didn’t do anything to warrant his dismissal. 

“WilmerHale found that the prior Board believed at the time that its actions would mitigate internal management challenges and did not anticipate that its actions would destabilize the Company,” OpenAI said.

The board also added three new members to the board: Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and on the Board of Directors at Pfizer; Nicole Seligman, former EVP and Global General Counsel of Sony and President of Sony Entertainment and on the Board of Directors at Paramount Global; and Fidji Simo, CEO and Chair of Instacart and on the Board of Directors at Shopify. 

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“As Chair of the Board, I am excited to welcome Sue, Nicole, and Fidji to the OpenAI Board of Directors,” Taylor said. “Their experience and leadership will enable the Board to oversee OpenAI’s growth and to ensure that we pursue OpenAI’s mission of ensuring artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.”

OpenAI said after the WilmerHale law firm conducted dozens of interviews with members of the prior board and reviewed tens of thousands of documents, “the Board expressed its full confidence in Mr. Sam Altman and Mr. Greg Brockman’s ongoing leadership of OpenAI.”

Altman told reporters Friday, according to Axios, “I’m pleased this whole thing is over. Having said that, I did learn a lot from this experience.”