OpenAI brings back Sam Altman as CEO just days after his firing unleashed chaos

The ousted leader of ChatGPT maker OpenAI will return to the company that fired him just days ago, concluding a short but chaotic power struggle that shocked the tech industry and underscored the conflicts around how to safely build artificial intelligence.

The San Francisco-based company said late Tuesday that it "reached an agreement in principle" for co-founder Sam Altman to return as CEO under a different board of directors.

The agreement followed intense negotiations that began Saturday between Altman's side and the board members who pushed him out. The discussions included disagreements about Altman's future role and who would stay on the board, according to a person familiar with the talks who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak publicly about such sensitive matters.

An independent investigation into Altman and the events that led to his ouster, announced earlier this week, will continue, according to the person, who described board members' slow erosion of trust in the OpenAI leader without pointing to any serious wrongdoing. The company previously made unspecified allegations that Altman had not been candid with the board.

The lack of transparency surrounding Altman's firing led to a weekend of internal conflict at the company and growing outside pressure from the startup's investors, particularly Microsoft, which on Monday hired Altman and a key ally, OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman, and opened its doors to any of the other more than 700 employees who wanted to join them.

The turmoil accentuated the differences between Altman -- who has become the face of generative AI's rapid commercialization since ChatGPT's arrival a year ago -- and board members who have expressed deep reservations about the safety risks posed by AI as it gets more advanced.

One of the four board members who participated in Altman's ouster, OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, was involved in the negotiations over the weekend. But that changed when he publicly expressed regret about the decision Monday morning and joined the call for the board's resignation.

The person familiar with the talks said board members did not want the company to tank or employees to defect to Microsoft. At the same time, they did not want to acquiesce to demands that they all step down, nor did they want to reinstate Altman and Brockman on the board or install new members who might not stand up to them, the person said.