On Sunday, The Information reported that Sam Altman is definitely out as CEO of OpenAI and former Twitch CEO Emmet Shear is the new interim CEO, according to a statement by board director Ilya Sutskever to the staff of the company.
Shear, who stepped away from Twitch earlier in the year, was a co-founder of the Amazon-owned live video streaming platform.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to media requests for comment on the report.
According to the report, Sutskever was adamant that despite efforts by executives of the company to get him to return, Altman would not be coming back to the company. There were no other details in the report.
The Information had earlier reported on Sunday that former OpenAI President Greg Brockman had joined executives of OpenAI at the headquarters of the company in San Francisco with Altman, following interim CEO Mira Murati telling the staff she had invited Altman.
On Sunday, Reuters reported that Altman has been discussing a possible return to the company which launched the ChatGPT bot, so that he could improve its governance structure, while at the same time he is seeking to launch his own new artificial intelligence venture.
Altman was fired Friday by the board of the company, despite being the human face of the field of generative AI, leaving many industry watchers and players shocked.
The firing of Altman angered former and current employees, who were left worried the upheaval in the company’s management could adversely affect the upcoming $86 billion share sale.
Brockman, the former president and co-founder of the company, was also at the offices on Sunday, according to the report by The Information. As part of the shuffling of management, Brockman had stepped down from the board, and on Friday, he announced he had quit the company.
According to The Information report, the biggest backer of OpenAI, Microsoft, is considering taking a role on the board, if Altman were to return to OpenAI.
The report added that Microsoft could take a regular voting seat on the board of directors of OpenAI, or it could take a position as a board observer without voting power.
