In a dramatic announcement, Sam Altman, CEO of the outspoken and highly visible artificial intelligence technology giant OpenAI, has been fired from the company with immediate effect.
In a statement posted online Friday, the company said Altman “has been consistently dishonest in his dealings with the board, which has hindered his ability to fulfill his responsibilities.”
“The board has no confidence in OpenAI's ability to continue to lead,” the announcement continued. “We believe new leadership is necessary as we move forward.”
The move comes less than two weeks after Altman headlined OpenAI's Devday conference, where several significant new features and improvements to ChatGPT's generative AI service were announced. Just two days ago, OpenAI said it would not accept any new paid subscriptions due to overwhelming demand—a move shortly after the company suffered an outage blamed on Russian hackers.
In conjunction with Altman's ouster, OpenAI's chief technology officer Meera Murathi was appointed as interim CEO.
“A member of OpenAI's leadership team for five years, Mira has been instrumental in OpenAI's evolution to become a global AI leader,” OpenAI said. It leads.
Murrati described him as “uniquely qualified for this role,” adding that he expects a seamless transition as the company conducts a search for a permanent CEO.
“We thank Sam for his many contributions to the founding and development of OpenAI,” the statement said.
“Loved my time at OpenAI,” Altman wrote on Twitter. “It was transformative for me personally, and we give the world a little bit of hope.”
Altman could not be reached for comment, and OpenAI did not respond to a request from Decrypt for further comment.
The company announced that the chairman of the board, Greg Brockman, will leave, but will remain as a direct report to Murati as OpenAI.
Brockman co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and served as its first CTO. After studying computer science at Harvard University and MIT, he rose to the position of CTO at AI firm Stripe from FinTech.
Altman is the co-founder of Tools for Humanity, which developed the WorldCoin global cryptocurrency project. Although some subscribers see the company's efforts to collect retina scans as a quick way to make money, it has faced strong opposition in some circles as an invasion of privacy — or worse.
It's unclear whether Altman's removal from OpenAI is related to WorldCoin, which appeared poised to raise significant funding earlier this year.
This is a developing story and will be updated as information becomes available.
Stay on top of crypto news, get daily updates in your inbox.
