A high-ranking executive at OpenAI who served a few days as its interim CEO during a period of turmoil last year said she's leaving the artificial intelligence company. Mira Murati, OpenAI's chief technology officer, said in a written statement Wednesday that, after much reflection, she has "made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI." "I'm stepping away because I want to create the time and space to do my own exploration," she said. Two other top executives are also on their way out, CEO Sam Altman announced later Wednesday. The decisions by Murati, as well as OpenAI's Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew and another research leader, Barret Zoph, were made "independently of each other and amicably," Altman said in a note to employees he shared on social media.

OpenAI said that Sam Altman was officially reinstated as chief executive officer and that it has a new initial board of directors, with Microsoft Corp. joining as a nonvoting observer. The announcement Wednesday, a blog post penned by Altman, comes two weeks after the CEO's shock firing from the artificial intelligence startup, followed by an operatic boardroom power struggle. OpenAI also said that Mira Murati -- who had been chief technology officer until Altman's ousting when she was briefly named interim CEO -- is once again the company's CTO. OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman will return as the company's president after he quit in protest over Altman's firing. Microsoft, the company's largest investor, had not previously had a position on the board before it took the observer role.

Days after he was fired as CEO by OpenAI's board, Sam Altman is set to return to the company. OpenAI released a statement late Tuesday saying it had "reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO." The proposed agreement includes replacing all the directors that fired Altman bar one, Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo. He would be joined on the new board by Bret Taylor, formerly CEO of Salesforce and Larry Summers, formerly US Secretary of the Treasury. OpenAI was in "intense" negotiations earlier on Tuesday with Altman and the board of directors that ousted him last Friday, in an effort to rescue the embattled company. The talks were acknowledged in a memo sent to staff Monday by OpenAI's vice president of global affairs, Anna Makanju, saying that the talks included Altman, the board, and the new interim CEO, Emmett Shear.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Monday said that he was open to the prospect of Sam Altman returning to OpenAI following his dramatic ouster from the high-profile company last week, as the fallout of his abrupt removal continues. The tech giant had previously announced that it was bringing in Altman and former OpenAI President Greg Brockman to lead a new artificial intelligence research team there, and also appeared prepared to hire other OpenAI employees who choose to follow their former boss out of the company. Brockman resigned from OpenAI in protest over the firing of Altman as CEO. But in an interview with CNBC, Nadella seemed willing to accept a scenario in which Altman would return to his old job, saying it's up to the people of OpenAI to choose to stay there or go over to Microsoft. "I'm open to both options," he said.

More than three days after OpenAI was thrown into chaos by Sam Altman's sudden firing from his post as CEO, one big question remains unanswered: Why? Altman was removed by OpenAI's non-profit board through an unconventional governance structure that as one of the company's cofounders he helped to create. It gave a small group of individuals wholly independent of the ChatGPT maker's core operations the power to dismiss its leadership, in the name of ensuring humanity-first oversight of its AI technology. The board's brief and somewhat cryptic statement announcing Altman's departure said the directors had "concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities." Altman was replaced by CTO Mira Murati who was appointed interim CEO. Greg Brockman, like Altman an OpenAI cofounder, was removed from his post as chair of the board and quit the company in solidarity with Altman several hours later. There have been many twists and turns since Friday, with Altman making a failed attempt to return as CEO, the board replacing Murati as interim CEO with Twitch cofounder Emmett Shear, Microsoft announcing it would hire Altman and Brockman, and almost every OpenAI employee threatening to quit unless Altman returned.

The firing of Sam Altman as chief executive of OpenAI on Friday took the tech world by surprise and has triggered a Silicon Valley corporate drama. Altman is not just the CEO of the company behind the ChatGPT artificial intelligence chatbot. He is also the figurehead of a revolution in AI that has enthralled the public and investors but also alarmed industry insiders and experts. Here we answer some key questions about what's been going on and why it matters. OpenAI is the San Francisco-based company behind ChatGPT, a chatbot that has wowed users with its ability to produce highly convincing text responses to human prompts – from writing academic essays to creating recipes and summarising lengthy documents.

The confounding saga of Sam Altman's sudden, shocking expulsion from OpenAI on Friday, followed by last-ditch attempts from investors and loyalists to reinstate him over the weekend, appears to have ended right where it started: with Altman and former OpenAI co-founder/president/board member Greg Brockman out for good. But there's a twist: Microsoft, which has been OpenAI's cash-and-infrastructure backer for years, announced early Monday morning that it was hiring Altman and Brockman "to lead a new advanced AI research team." In a follow-up tweet, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella declared that Altman would become chief executive of this team, which would take the shape of an "independent" entity within Microsoft, operating something like company subsidiaries GitHub and LinkedIn. Notably, per Brockman, this new entity will be led by himself, Altman, and the first three employees who'd quit OpenAI Friday night in protest of how those two had been treated. I'm super excited to have you join as CEO of this new group, Sam, setting a new pace for innovation.

After a weekend of chaos at OpenAI, the company's board of directors appointed former Twitch boss Emmett Shear interim CEO late Sunday. It was just the latest in a string of tumultuous changes at the AI company following Friday's ouster of CEO Sam Altman, and it left many wondering what kind of CEO Shear would be, why the board had chosen him, and how much he would differ from Altman. Shear was one of four cofounders of Justin.tv, In June 2011, the site moved its gaming content to its new Twitch platform, which soon became the go-to place for video game streaming, with millions of monthly streamers. Amazon bought the company for $1 billion in 2014.

OpenAI was in open revolt on Monday with more than 500 employees signing an open letter threatening to leave unless the board resigns and reinstates Sam Altman as CEO, along with cofounder and former president Greg Brockman. Altman was controversially fired by the board on Friday. "The process through which you terminated Sam Altman and removed Greg Brockman from the board has jeopardized all of this work and undermined our mission and company" the letter reads. "Your conduct has made it clear you did not have the competence to oversee OpenAI." Remarkably, the letter's signees include Ilya Sutskever, the company's chief scientist and a member of its board, who has been blamed for coordinating the boardroom coup against Altman in the first place.

Kyle Vogt, CEO of self-driving car developer Cruise and who founded the company before its acquisition by General Motors in 2016, resigned this evening. His announcement comes amidst upheaval at the company which last month had its permit to operate its groundbreaking robotaxi service in San Francisco suspended by state regulators. "The status quo on our roads sucks, but together we've proven there is something far better around the corner," Vogt wrote in a message to Cruise workers posted on X. He did not refer to the company's recent troubles. Cruise's crisis began on the night of October 2 in San Francisco when a human driver struck a pedestrian and threw her into the path of one of the company's driverless robotaxis.