Sam Altman & Greg Brockman to join Microsoft

Open AI's former CEO Sam Altman and former president Greg Brockman are joining Microsoft to lead a new team for advanced research in Artificial Intelligence, Satya Nadella announced today. This comes days after Altman was fired from OpenAI, a company he co-founded.Nadella added that Altman will be joining the research group as its CEO. "I'm super excited to have you join as CEO of this new group, Sam, setting a new pace for innovation. We've learned a lot over the years about how to give founders and innovators space to build independent identities and cultures within Microsoft, including GitHub, Mojang Studios, and LinkedIn, and I'm looking forward to having you do the same," he said in reply to Altman's "mission continues" post.

We remain committed to our partnership with OpenAI and have confidence in our product roadmap, our ability to continue to innovate with everything we announced at Microsoft Ignite, and in continuing to support our customers and partners. We look forward to getting to know Emmett…

— Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) November 20, 2023

The move shocked the tech industry. Soon after, US media reports claimed that major investors in OpenAI wanted Altman to return and had started efforts to reach out to him. The attempts to bring him back, reports said, hit a roadblock after Altman demanded sweeping changes, including the removal of current board members, as a condition to return.