Sam Altman is back—again. The entrepreneur who was suddenly fired as OpenAI CEO and removed from the ChatGPT developer’s board last November, before regaining his CEO position days later, is now getting his director seat back, too. Altman and three veteran business executives, all women, were named to OpenAI’s board on Friday, OpenAI announced in a blog post. Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Nicole Seligman, a former Sony general counsel; and Fidji Simo, the CEO and chair of grocery delivery company Instacart and a former Facebook executive, are the others joining the board. OpenAI’s announcement coincided with the release of results from an internal investigation commissioned by three existing board members and carried out by the law firm WilmerHale. It found “a breakdown in trust” precipitated Altman’s removal by the prior board and that his earlier conduct “did not mandate removal,” according to a summary published by OpenAI. On a press call Friday, Altman attempted to draw a line under OpenAI’s drama, saying, “I’m pleased this whole thing is over.” He added that “it’s been disheartening to see some people with an agenda trying to use leaks in the press to hurt the company, hurt the mission.” While the investigation cleared Altman to reclaim his board seat, he said he “did learn a lot from this experience,” expressing remorse for one incident in particular involving a board member he did not name. That appeared to be a reference to former OpenAI director Helen Toner, a researcher at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, a Georgetown think tank. After she published a research analysis that criticized the speed of OpenAI’s product launch decisions, Altman reportedly tried to remove her from the board. “I think I could have handled that situation with more grace and care—I apologize for that,” he said. Toner did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Late on Friday, Toner posted a statement on X attributed to her and Tasha McCauley, who along with Toner and OpenAI’s chief scientist Ilya Sutskever was removed from the company’s board as part of the deal that restored Altman as CEO in November. “We hope the new board does its job in governing OpenAI and holding at accountable to the mission,” the statement said in part. “As we told the investigators, deception, manipulation, and resistance to thorough oversight should be unaccceptable.” OpenAI has been looking to expand the board for months after announcing its interim board following the November chaos. It was formed after a deal between some board members who had pushed Altman out, alleging he had endangered its mission to develop superhuman AI for the benefit of all. Three of those directors agreed to step down after more than 95 percent of OpenAI employees threatened to quit if he wasn’t brought back. The company’s governance has drawn public scrutiny because of its development of ChatGPT, Dall-E, and other services that have kicked off a boom in generative AI technologies over the past couple of years.
