Mira Murati, OpenAI’s former CTO, told Bloomberg on June 5 that the company would have failed if Sam Altman had not been brought back as CEO.
On November 17, 2023, the board fired Altman. Murati became interim CEO and immediately pushed for his return. The board replaced her with former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear. Altman returned on November 22.
The reinstatement led to a governance overhaul: the board members who fired Altman were replaced, and Microsoft got a board observer seat.
Murati left OpenAI in September 2024. She founded Thinking Machines Lab in early 2025, raising $2 billion at a $12 billion valuation.
The crisis exposed a lasting tension between OpenAI’s nonprofit mission and its commercial growth-a friction that continues across the AI industry.