With his sudden return late Tuesday after several turbulent days in Silicon Valley, CEO Sam Altman became the latest ousted executive to rejoin the organization he helped to found — in this case, OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company that forced the entire tech industry to reorient when it released ChatGPT last year.
After his sudden firing Friday by OpenAI's board of directors, hundreds of OpenAI employees threatened to quit if Altman was not brought back. Investors campaigned to reinstate him. And Altman himself had hinted at a possible return Sunday, less than 48 hours after the company's board announced his departure, when he posted a photo of himself wearing an OpenAI visitor badge to the social media site X. ("The first and last time I ever wear one of these," he wrote.)
