OpenAI board's review concludes, Altman and Brockman to continue leading OpenAI

OpenAI’s board announced that an outside review of Sam Altman’s November 2023 removal had concluded, that the board expressed full confidence in Altman and Greg Brockman continuing to lead the company, and that Altman himself would rejoin the board as a director for the first time since his reinstatement as chief executive.

The law firm WilmerHale, engaged by a special committee of the reconstituted board, said it had conducted dozens of interviews with members of the prior board, OpenAI executives, advisors and other witnesses, and reviewed more than 30,000 documents. Its central finding was that the firing resulted from “a breakdown in trust between the prior board and Mr. Altman” rather than from any single act of misconduct, and explicitly that his conduct “did not mandate removal.” The review stated the decision did not arise from concerns about product safety, security, the pace of development, OpenAI’s finances, or its statements to investors, customers or business partners — addressing directly the speculation that had filled the information vacuum left by the original board’s terse public statement. It also found the prior board had failed to give Altman a chance to respond to its concerns before acting, and had not anticipated that removing him would destabilise the company, a consequence that became evident within days when hundreds of employees threatened to resign.

Three new directors joined the board: Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former chief executive of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Nicole Seligman, former general counsel of Sony; and Fidji Simo, chief executive of Instacart. Their appointment, alongside the three members who had joined immediately after the crisis, addressed criticism that the interim board Altman returned to in November lacked diversity and independent standing.

The announcement closed the formal governance process the November crisis had opened, though it did not resolve the underlying question the crisis raised: whether a non-profit board empowered to prioritise safety over growth could exercise that power once a company’s commercial and employee interests were arrayed against it.