Sam Altman to return as OpenAI’s CEO

Just days after he was fired by the OpenAI board, Sam Altman is set to return to the firm he co-founded as CEO, alongside a new board.

In a post on X early Wednesday morning, the artificial intelligence firm said it had “reached an agreement in principle” for Altman to return, and that Bret Taylor, the former CEO of Salesforce, would chair a new “initial board,” which would also include former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers and Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, who is an existing board member.

Altman, who took a job at Microsoft after his controversial ousting on Friday, said he was “looking forward” to returning to OpenAI, which created the famed ChatGPT language model-based chatbot.

More than 730 of OpenAI’s employees — around 95 percent of the workforce — signed an open letter on Monday threatening to quit the firm if Altman wasn’t reinstated.