OpenAI co-founder and chairman Greg Brockman has resigned from the company, he said on Friday, hours after the Microsoft-backed giant abruptly fired its chief executive Sam Altman and assured that Brockman would remain at the startup. Brockman’s sudden departure adds to the day’s uncertainties at OpenAI, closely following its maiden developer conference led by Altman.
Brockman said in a series of tweets that Ilya Sutskever, the chief scientist at OpenAI, briefed Altman on a Friday noon call Thursday afternoon. On the call, Sutskever and the rest of OpenAI’s board told Altman he had been fired.
“As far as we know, the management team was made aware of this shortly after, except for Mira who found out the night before,” Brockman wrote. Mira Murati, CTO of OpenAI, has been appointed as interim CEO of OpenAI, the startup announced today.
OpenAI said earlier that Brockman is stepping down as chairman of the board but will remain with the company. Brockman, who co-founded OpenAI with Altman, is a close confidant of the former OpenAI CEO. He said Friday that the board wanted him to continue, but he chose to step down and regretted the board’s direction.
OpenAI and Microsoft, which does not sit on the startup’s board but owns about half the company, remain tight-lipped about what led to Altman’s departure from the startup, whose big language model started/supercharged the race AI.
The couple’s exit has sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley. Altman was the public face of the startup, which is not only widely regarded as leading the current AI race, but in less than a year has also taken over as the kingmaker for countless other startups building on top of OpenAI’s offerings.
“I’m very proud of what we’ve all built together since I started in my apartment 8 years ago. We’ve been through difficult and wonderful times together, accomplishing so much despite reasons that should have been impossible,” Brockman wrote in a message to the OpenAI team. “But based on today’s news, I’ve given up. I sincerely wish you nothing but the best. I continue to believe in the mission of creating safe AGI that benefits all of humanity.”
Earlier on Friday, OpenAI said Altman had left the company after losing the confidence of the board. OpenAI said Altman is leaving the company after a “deliberative review process” by the board” concluded that he was “not consistently candid in his communications” with the board, which hindered “his ability to exercise his responsibilities”.
The announcement comes less than two weeks after OpenAI held its maiden developer conference, where Altman shared that ChatGPT had amassed 100 million users. Microsoft chief Satya Nadella, who was chief guest at the conference, said “we love you guys.” In a later interview with the FT, Altman said he expected to raise “a lot more” from Microsoft and other investors in the future.
“We have a long-term agreement with OpenAI with full access to everything we need to deliver on our innovation agenda and an exciting product roadmap. and we remain committed to our partnership, and to Mira and the team. Together, we will continue to bring the significant benefits of this technology to the world,” Nadella said in a statement on Friday.
Read more of the ongoing coverage of Sam Altman’s firing from OpenAI:
