Sam Altman out at OpenAI, CTO Mira Murati to take over

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has been removed from his position and will leave the board of directors, following a review process that “concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board.”

Mira Murati, the company’s chief technology officer (whom Fast Company profiled in March 2023), will take over as interim CEO, effective immediately, the board said in a statement.

“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 company wrote in a release. “The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.”

OpenAI is best known for its AI chatbot ChatGPT that was released to the public last year. The language model allows users to have text conversations that can do things like plan vacations, solve problems, and write cover letters. The surge of popularity ended up pushing several other large firms, like Alphabet, to heavily fund their own AI work.

OpenAI’s board of directors consists of the company’s chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, Tasha McCauley, and Helen Toner. While the release stated that Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president, was stepping down as chairman of the board but would remain in his role at the company, he later announced that he was quitting altogether “based on today’s news.”