Sam Altman was the trusted face of AI. His firm, though, is much more complex

The news on Friday that Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, had been abruptly sacked by the company's board came as a shock to the tech industry. "Mr Altman's departure," said the ponderous announcement, "follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI." Given that, ever since ChatGPT took the world by storm last December, Altman has been the photogenic poster-boy for generative AI – the darling of the mainstream media and an honoured invitee to the corridors of western power – news of his sudden fall from grace launched a torrent of excited speculation in the tech commentariat. Nobody, it seems, actually knew anything, but there was a consensus that Something Was Up. No doubt we will get to the bottom of the mystery in due course, but for now a more productive line of inquiry might be into the corporate history of OpenAI.