The world’s hottest AI company went through three CEOs in under a week and ended up with the same one it had at the start — so what happened, and what’s next?

On November 17th, 2023, OpenAI’s nonprofit board abruptly announced that co-founder and CEO Sam Altman was out. The shake-up came just shy of one year after the launch of ChatGPT, which quickly became one of the fastest-growing apps in history and initiated an industry-wide race to build generative AI.

Over a period of just a few days, the CEO job shuffled between CTO Mira Murati and former Twitch boss Emmett Shear. Meanwhile, hundreds of OpenAI employees said they would leave for jobs at Microsoft, OpenAI’s lead investor, unless the board reinstated Altman. In the end, Altman returned, along with co-founder Greg Brockman and a revamped board of directors.

On March 8th, after an independent investigation into his sudden firing, OpenAI reinstated Altman as a member of the board, along with three other additions.

That same month, OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, claiming that the company’s pursuit of profit has led it to abandon its founding nonprofit mission to develop artificial general intelligence technology (AGI) that will benefit humanity.

All of the news and updates about OpenAI continue below.