Sam Altman officially returns to OpenAI as the company CEO

OpenAI has taken to its website to officially announce the return of Sam Altman after the company's board of directors ousted him.

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The return of the former CEO and founder of OpenAI was made official in a Wednesday blog post on the OpenAI website, which features a lengthy message from Altman, along with a brief message from Bret Taylor, the chair of the board of directors. The blog post explains that OpenAI's board will be adopting a non-voting observer from Microsoft, and the new board of directors will consist of Bret Taylor, Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo.

The now-reinstated CEO explains that he doesn't hold any grudges against any of the people that were on the side of removing him as the company's CEO and described his brief time away as a "wonderfully focusing time". Additionally, Altman wrote that during the chaotic time of his departure no customers of any of the company's services bailed, illustrating trust and inherent value in the products the company has made.

We have three immediate priorities.

Advancing our research plan and further investing in our full-stack safety efforts, which have always been critical to our work. Our research roadmap is clear; this was a wonderfully focusing time. I share the excitement you all feel; we will turn this crisis into an opportunity! I'll work with Mira on this.

Continuing to improve and deploy our products and serve our customers. It's important that people get to experience the benefits and promise of AI, and have the opportunity to shape it. We continue to believe that great products are the best way to do this. I'll work with Brad, Jason and Anna to ensure our unwavering commitment to users, customers, partners and governments around the world is clear.

Bret, Larry, and Adam will be working very hard on the extremely important task of building out a board of diverse perspectives, improving our governance structure and overseeing an independent review of recent events. I look forward to working closely with them on these crucial steps so everyone can be confident in the stability of OpenAI.

I am so looking forward to finishing the job of building beneficial AGI with you all-best team in the world, best mission in the world.