Trial Reveals Sam Altman Once Hoped for Microsoft to Acquire OpenAI to Preserve CEO Position

According to Motion Watch Beating Monitor, during the Musk v. Altman trial, held on November 19, 2023, text messages between Altman and then-CTO Murati were made public. Two days prior, the OpenAI board suddenly removed Altman as CEO, citing lack of transparency as the reason without further explanation. At the time of these messages, Murati was on a call with the board while Altman was kept outside, relying on her to relay messages and coordinating with Microsoft CEO Nadella.

Altman first inquired about the situation, to which Murati responded, "The direction is extremely poor." Altman proposed that he could "just leave directly," but the board did not respond. He then asked if he could join the meeting with the board, which was also denied, without even allowing him to wait a little longer. Murati mentioned that the board had already listed all the "reasons and issues" with Altman to her and requested a new CEO that evening. The chosen candidate was former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear, with Murati referring to him in the text as "someone from Twitch."

Altman asked if the team should send a joint letter to the board to pressure them, but Murati dismissed the idea, saying, "They don't care if everyone resigns." Altman questioned whether the board wanted the intellectual property to flow to Anthropic (a competitor company founded by former OpenAI Research VP Dario Amodei), to which Murati replied, "No, they just don't want you involved in AGI." The dispute was not about safety protocols but about who would control general artificial intelligence.

At this point, Altman proposed a temporary idea: to have Microsoft acquire OpenAI, asking if this would meet the board's governance structure requirements. Murati brought Nadella into the board call and asked about the progress, to which she received the response, "Satya (Nadella) is practicing Tai Chi."

On the same day, the court also released another set of text messages: a group chat among Altman, former Salesforce CEO Bret Taylor (who later became the new Chairman of the OpenAI board), and Nadella. Altman's proposal was for Murati to rehire him and co-founder Brockman in temporary CEO positions, while simultaneously applying for a legal injunction against the board. Nadella replied, "Sounds good." However, by 3:20 AM, Altman mentioned that Murati was still in discussion with the board, and the progress was not going well.

Ultimately, what proved to be effective were not these negotiations. Over 700 OpenAI employees collectively threatened to resign and join Altman at Microsoft, even the chief scientist Sutskever, who initiated the revolt, signed. Five days later, Altman returned as CEO, a significant overhaul of the board occurred, with Toner and McCauley exiting, leaving only D'Angelo.