Sam Altman is returning to OpenAI’s board after review into firing

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Sam Altman will return to the board of OpenAI after a review into the events that lead to his dramatic ousting from the ChatGPT maker found no evidence that he should have been sacked.

Altman was fired as chief executive and removed from the board of the artificial intelligence company he co-founded in November. The remaining board members reversed course days later, reinstating him as chief executive and stepping down instead.

A review into the boardroom chaos concluded there had been a significant breakdown of trust between the previous board and Altman, but found no evidence that the chief executive had misled investors or pushed product releases at an unsafe pace.

“This was simply a breakdown in trust between the board and Mr Altman,” said former Salesforce boss Bret Taylor, who was appointed as an OpenAI director after the previous board was disbanded.

Following the boardroom coup, Taylor commissioned law firm WilmerHale to conduct an independent investigation into Altman’s behaviour and the decision to remove him.

Following the conclusion of that review on Friday, Taylor’s special committee “expressed its full confidence in Mr Altman and Mr (Greg) Brockman’s ongoing leadership of OpenAI.”

OpenAI announced three more new board members on Friday: Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former head of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Nicole Seligman, former president of Sony Entertainment, and Fidji Simo, chief executive of Instacart. Former US Treasury secretary Larry Summers was appointed to the board late last year.