The Inside Story of Microsoft's Partnership with OpenAI

At around 11:30 a.m. on the Friday before Thanksgiving, Microsoft's chief executive, Satya Nadella, was having his weekly meeting with senior leaders when a panicked colleague told him to pick up the phone. An executive from OpenAI, an artificial-intelligence startup into which Microsoft had invested a reported thirteen billion dollars, was calling to explain that within the next twenty minutes the company's board would announce that it had fired Sam Altman, OpenAI's C.E.O. and co-founder. It was the start of a five-day crisis that some people at Microsoft began calling the Turkey-Shoot Clusterfuck. Nadella has an easygoing demeanor, but he was so flabbergasted that for a moment he didn't know what to say. He'd worked closely with Altman for more than four years and had grown to admire and trust him.