Leaked text messages from Sam Altman's firing and rehiring show Mira Murati and Altman in chaos, frantically involving Microsoft's Satya Nadella. The texts suggest Nadella acted as the adult in the room, using corporate pressure to force a resolution and reshape OpenAI's leadership.
The biggest story to come out of this week and this trial is around what happened when Sam Altman got fired a few years ago and then eventually rehired. Absolute wildest part of what we've seen so far are the text messages between Mira Murahi, the former CTO of OpenAI and the interim CEO for like a day, and Sam Altman while all of this was happening on the day that Sam was being fired. This text thread here is just kind of crazy to me. Can you indicate directionally good or bad? Satya and others are anxious. Directionally very bad. Okay. Can you wrap up soon? Lots of pressure from Microsoft for an update. Sam, this is very bad. Can I come in? They don't want you to. They're convinced about their decision. For me to be fired or some new thing? Yes, for you to be gone. Can I tell Satya? Is this final or should you add Satya in? Trying to add Satya now. Still don't want me? Just a wild chain of text messages. Kind of proves that Satya was like the adult in the room. Like they wanted Satya to get in and sort of intervene and make this all right. And from what I can tell, that's kind of how it went down. Satya was like the adult who came in and said, "All right, everybody just cool down. Let's figure this out." I don't know if that's what actually played out or not, but that's kind of what the text messages feel like they imply.
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