The week leading up to Thanksgiving 2023 was the biggest TV moment in the artificial intelligence industry. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, was abruptly fired from his position at the maker of ChatGPT. Interpretation? And that Altman “was not consistently frank in his communications with the Board of Directors.” Now, through witness testimony and trial exhibits in Musk v. Altmanaudiences get a tangible look behind the scenes of this dramatic weekend for the first time, much of which centers on former CTO Mira Moratti.
It was a unique situation, as the power play – which seemed to change by the hour – played out so publicly in so many ways. The strikingly ambiguous Board of Directors blog post announcing Altman’s ouster was published on the OpenAI website, immediately giving rise to a list of conspiracy theories circulating on Public statements in support of Altman. An online campaign began among hundreds of OpenAI employees, posting a heart if they supported Altman’s reinstatement, and many posting the phrase “OpenAI is nothing without its employees.” Rumors spread as countless onlookers anxiously waited for any new kernel of information. (I covered the whole thing on a backpacking trip in Patagonia, armed only with a notes app on my iPhone and no laptop.)
Throughout it all, one unassuming figure seemed to be everywhere at once: Mira Moratti, CTO at OpenAI. Initially, she was appointed interim CEO, before immediately ceding the position to Emmett Shear. Within days, Altman was back at the helm of the company, and the board that met to fire him was largely gone.
Moratti had publicly supported Altman’s reinstatement and posted online in support of his return to his position at the company. But as time passed, reports emerged that she had a major hand in his ouster. It was, by some accounts, more or less He started The internal conversation about concerns surrounding Altman and sent a significant amount of information – including screenshots, documentation of text messages and allegations of mismanagement during Altman’s tenure at Y Combinator – to co-founder Ilya Sutskever, who then conveyed his concerns to OpenAI’s board of directors in the form of a 52-page memo. In testimony this week, Helen Toner, a former board member, said Moratti and Sutskver’s concerns materially reinforced the board’s concerns regarding a pattern of deception, Altman’s “resistance” to oversight of the board, and his “manipulation” of board operations and management problems.
On November 16, 2023, four members of the OpenAI Board of Directors – Toner, Ilya Sutskever, Adam D’Angelo, and Tasha McCauley – unanimously signed a document terminating Altman’s employment with OpenAI and appointing Moratti as the new interim CEO.
Although by many accounts Moratti played a key role in the run-up to Altman’s ouster, Moratti appeared to shift her support to Altman almost immediately.
In 78 text messages exchanged over the course of 14 hours, between early Sunday evening and Monday morning, Moratti and Altman spoke at length about whether his reinstatement was possible and what would happen next. Altman said that D’Angelo, a board member, was “trying to get the board to approve the configuration” but that Altman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told D’Angelo that it “wasn’t working and that [they] Need to start preparing for plan B.
At around 2:30 a.m. on Monday morning, Altman asked: “Can you point out a good or bad trend? Satya and others are concerned.”
Moratti replied: “The trend is very bad. Sam this is very bad.”
Altman asked to join the meeting and Moratti said the board did not want him to do so. Altman then texted, “What do you want to improve on? I’m still willing to quit if it helps. If crazy lawsuits come against me, I’m not sure about that.”
Moratti said the board was convinced by Altman’s decision to leave the company, adding: “They told me all the reasons and problems with you and why you cannot become CEO.”
Altman questioned why the board was “saying all weekend that they want me back.”
“They want to have a new CEO tonight (not me),” Moratti replied.
Altman asked who, and Moratti replied, “The new guy’s a pickpocket rando guy,” referring to Cher.
Moratti told Altman that she “hopes Satya can help undo this.”
Between November 17 and 20, Moratti and Nadella, who had been directly on Altman’s side during the conflict and had offered to hire every OpenAI employee at Microsoft to work under Altman, also exchanged a number of text messages (largely one-sided, with Moratti communicating with Nadella). In one of them, Moratti states that she “doesn’t put [her] “Name on this,” appears to be a reference to a statement issued by the board on Sunday that “the Board is standing firm in its decision as the only way to advance and defend OpenAI’s mission,” and that “simply put, Sam’s behavior and lack of transparency in his interactions with the Board undermined the Board’s ability to effectively oversee the company in the manner in which he was entrusted.”
Within days, more than 750 OpenAI employees signed a letter to the OpenAI board, threatening to resign and join the new Microsoft subsidiary that would be led by Altman and OpenAI President Greg Brockman.
“The process by which you terminated Sam Altman and removed Greg Brockman from the Board of Directors has jeopardized all of this work and undermined our mission and our company,” they wrote.
First signer on that message? Moratti herself.
One of the most interesting parts of the letter is near the end, when the signatories specifically point out to the board that “within two days of your initial decision, you once again replaced interim CEO Mira Moratti against the best interests of the company.”
But remember: Moratti apparently told the board she didn’t want to serve as interim CEO unless the board could “legitimize” the decision, according to Toner’s testimony. Toner said Moratti “seems to not have understood, whether intentionally or unintentionally, that she had a pivotal role to play in legitimizing this decision herself.”
“She was waiting to see which way the wind was going to blow, and she didn’t realize it was the wind,” Toner said.
Toner also said Moratti was “strikingly unsupportive” and “noticeably negative” after Altman’s dismissal, adding: “She seemed completely uninterested in telling her team that her conversations with us were an important factor in our decision to fire Sam.”
During the 78 text messages between Moratti and Altman, Altman asked if it was time to send the letter from employees to the board; Moratti told him that it “wouldn’t matter” and that board members “don’t care if everyone quits,” only that they didn’t want “Altman’s hand in the business.” Altman asked if D’Angelo knew that Moratti had rehired Altman, and she said yes.
Early on the morning of Monday, November 20, Moratti sent a text message to Microsoft’s CTO, Kevin Scott, that they were “about to resign from the board.” Scott replied, “Really this time?” “It seems so,” said Moratti. “Elijah.” [Sutskever] Sign our petition.”
Later that morning, Moratti asked Nadella to “please make a public statement soon showing support for the joint.” [OpenAI] The team, basically getting the team together? It is very important that we do not lose researchers to Demis [Hassabis] Or Elon [Musk]”.
Just over a year ago, in a document dated September 30, 2022, Moratti wrote a list of complaints about Altman and his management style that appear to have been shared directly with him. She wrote that “constant panic around our projects, people, goals, etc. breeds chaos and confusion,” and that “we talk about focus but in practice, our approach is to do everything, fast because we are constantly under pressure to change priorities and mix up people and projects.” She also wrote about Altman and the executive team’s mismatch on the importance of an applied AI team, and asked Altman to speak to her directly about his concerns: “I don’t want to hear about it from others… It’s a missed opportunity for us to solve important problems for the company, and it undermines the company’s leadership when it does so.”
Moratti also mentioned, in a 2022 document, the idea that “doing what users want is not in OpenAI’s DNA” – and that the company’s main goal is to achieve $100 million in revenue, with Altman’s position being that “it doesn’t matter how we get to that number, we need to get there.” Moratti also said that one of Altman’s most important proposed solutions to address these issues is to “get informed” and use official channels to put forth the proposed changes.
“All too often I hear from you two things at once that seem to me to be mutually exclusive: (1) we are not moving fast enough or a particular area or person is failing and (2) you don’t know what’s going on, so you may be wrong,” she wrote in the 2022 document. “When you’re not sure how things are going or if there’s a feeling that things aren’t going well, go directly to Mira for information and set up in-depth reviews until you feel satisfied with your understanding of the situation.”
As part of Moratti’s statement was played at trial Musk v. Altman She said this week that she stood by her criticism of Altman, and that her concerns were “entirely management-related… I had a very difficult job to do in an organization that was very complex. I was asking Sam to lead, to lead clearly, and not to undermine my ability to do my job.”
Moratti may not have been present in the courtroom, but her testimony – and what was revealed in the documents – was among the most memorable.
