OpenAI's chief executive Sam Altman will return to the company's board of directors after a probe into his brief sacking and subsequent rehiring. An investigation by law firm WilmerHale found that Altman's conduct "did not mandate his removal" last year, OpenAI said in a blog post on Friday. Altman's firing was instead due to a "breakdown in the relationship and loss of trust" between the 38-year-old entrepreneur and the previous board, the company said. OpenAI said it had "full confidence" in Altman's ongoing leadership at the artificial intelligence startup after reviewing the law firm's findings. "WilmerHale found that the prior Board acted within its broad discretion to terminate Mr. Altman, but also found that his conduct did not mandate removal," the company said in a summary of the report.

OpenAI's previous board shocked the tech world in November when it announced Altman's firing in a Friday afternoon blog post. After five days of wrangling between the board, company executives and OpenAI's investors, Altman was reinstated as CEO and three of the four board members who fired him stepped down. The fourth, Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo, is part of the current temporary board, but was not part of the subcommittee that led the review into the boardroom crisis, according to a December update to a blog post from OpenAI and the board.

The drama around Altman's sudden ouster at OpenAI has exposed the deep rift inside the company over who should control its future. OpenAI began in 2015 as a nonprofit research lab, but in recent years under Altman's leadership, it took on billions of dollars in investment from the likes of tech giant Microsoft and venture capitalists, and began developing consumer products. Outside critics and some employees worried the company had abandoned its mission and was behaving more like a Big Tech company. It originally was meant to provide a more transparent, democratic alternative to Big Tech.

Sam Altman will return to lead OpenAI less than five days after he was pushed out of one of the world's most valuable startups, setting off a shock back-and-forth drama that transfixed Silicon Valley and the global AI industry. Altman is returning as chief executive officer and the initial board will be led by Bret Taylor, a former co-CEO of Salesforce Inc. The other directors are Larry Summers, the former U.S. Treasury Secretary, and existing member Adam D'Angelo, the co-founder and CEO of Quora Inc. OpenAI is now working "to figure out the details," the company said in a post on X, formerly Twitter. We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo. We are collaborating to figure out the details.

Supported by Rethink Priorities • This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA and LW forums - you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on pur…

Volute, a technology company developing new enterprise workflow solutions, today announced the appointment of a new member to its Board of Directors – Enrique Shadah, Chief Operating Officer at Filtered.ai and Head of Venture Relations at MIT's LinQ Program for Biomedical Innovation. Volute, a technology company developing new enterprise workflow solutions, today announced the appointment of a new member to its Board of Directors – Enrique Shadah, Chief Operating Officer at Filtered.ai and Head of Venture Relations at MIT's LinQ Program for Biomedical Innovation. "On behalf of Volute and the Board of Directors, I am pleased to welcome Mr. Shadah to the Board," stated Michael Croft, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Volute. "Enrique has an impressive track record of working with thought leaders and trending technologies that bring innovations to market by marquee corporations as well as startups in numerous industries." "Michael is highly attuned to large organizations needs to increase productivity of knowledge workers through better workflow. This insight coupled with his deep understanding of technology, is the foundation on which Volute is building a leading position in the field of intelligent workflow and process automation. I look forward to working with Michael and the Volute team to accelerate progress towards this goal," Mr. Shadah added.