Altman's removal and return
The board dismissed OpenAI's chief executive, most of its roughly 770 employees signed a letter threatening to follow him out, and twelve days later he was back with a new board.
Why it matters
Governance designed as a safeguard against commercial pressure did not withstand it, and that happened in public over twelve days.
The non-profit board held the right to dismiss the chief executive precisely so that mission could outweigh profit. When it did so, Microsoft offered to take in the whole team and employees signed a letter demanding Altman's return. The board gave way and resigned itself. The episode showed that formal safeguards do not hold when a company's value rests on particular people. How many people. The previous version of this record said nearly all 800 employees. Al Jazeera the same day gives 770 employees and as many as 500 signatures at the time of writing; a Forbes headline of the same day says more than 700. The string 800 does not occur in the report: it was a rounding, not a number from a source.