Murati Deposition Reveals New Details on Altman’s OpenAI Ouster

SAN FRANCISCO — Deposition testimony from former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati has surfaced new details about CEO Sam Altman’s November 2023 ouster during the ongoing Musk v. Altman federal trial, including a previously undisclosed near-merger with Anthropic.

Murati’s deposition, portions of which have been made public through the federal trial, shed light on internal board communications and the sequence of events surrounding Altman’s abrupt firing and subsequent rehiring during the week before Thanksgiving 2023, according to The Verge.

At the time, OpenAI’s board said only that Altman had not been “consistently candid in his communications with the board” — a vague explanation that fueled speculation across the AI industry. The deposition testimony and trial exhibits now entering the public record offer a more granular account of what transpired behind closed doors at the ChatGPT maker.

Separately, former OpenAI board members have testified about what they characterized as an “extremely risky” near-merger between OpenAI and Anthropic, according to the New York Post. The discussions, which have not been previously disclosed in detail, would have brought together two of the most prominent AI safety-focused laboratories in the United States.

The disclosure has raised questions about potential consolidation in the AI industry and the governance structures at organizations originally founded as nonprofits with safety-oriented missions. Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, including Dario and Daniela Amodei, partly over disagreements about the direction of AI safety research.

The Musk v. Altman trial, brought by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — himself a co-founder of OpenAI — alleges that Altman and the company betrayed OpenAI’s founding nonprofit mission by pursuing commercial interests. Musk departed OpenAI’s board in 2018.

The trial has become a vehicle for public disclosure about the inner workings of one of the world’s most influential AI companies during a period of rapid growth. Witness testimony and exhibits have provided the most detailed public accounting yet of the events and decisions surrounding OpenAI’s leadership crisis.

The November 2023 episode, in which Altman was fired by the board on a Friday and reinstated days later after a near-total employee revolt, resulted in the departure of several board members and a reconstitution of OpenAI’s governance structure.

Trial proceedings are expected to continue yielding new details about the decisions that shaped the trajectory of the company behind ChatGPT, now valued at more than $300 billion.