By Roman Aglaganov
OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit, with an unusual structure: a board whose duty was to humanity, not shareholders, sitting above a for-profit company backed by billions from Microsoft. In November 2023, that structure was stress-tested in public.
The timeline
Friday 17 November: the board fired Sam Altman, saying it no longer had confidence in his ability to lead OpenAI because he had not been “consistently candid” with it. Co-founder Greg Brockman quit in protest the same day.
Sunday 19 November: after a weekend of negotiations, the board named Emmett Shear, the former head of Twitch, as interim chief executive.
Monday 20 November: Microsoft announced it would hire Altman and Brockman to lead a new AI research team. Meanwhile, 745 of OpenAI’s roughly 770 employees signed a letter threatening to quit and follow him unless the board resigned.
Wednesday 22 November: Altman was reinstated as chief executive, with a new board chaired by Bret Taylor.
What it revealed
The episode showed the tension at the heart of the AI industry: a mission framed around safety, and a business that needs to move fast to fund ever-larger models. When the people charged with the mission clashed with the people running the business, the business, and its employees and investors, won within a week.
OpenAI has since reorganised: in 2025 it converted its for-profit arm into a public benefit corporation, still controlled by its nonprofit foundation. The Thanksgiving weekend of 2023 remains Silicon Valley’s favourite boardroom thriller.
