Sam Altman, Greg Brockman to join OpenAI's biggest backer Microsoft to helm AI research team: Satya Nadella

Ousted OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and the company's former president Greg Brockman will join the AI firm's biggest backer Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella posted on X.

“...we’re extremely excited to share the news that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, together with colleagues, will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team. We look forward to moving quickly to provide them with the resources needed for their success,” Nadella tweeted.

This comes hours after Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear replaced Mira Murati as interim CEO after shocking ouster of Altman. Nadella said Microsoft is looking forward to getting to know Shear and other new top leaders at OpenAI, adding that his company is committed to the partnership with OpenAI.

“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 Shear and OAI's new leadership team and working with them,” Nadella said in his post.

Following Nadella's post, Elon Musk, who co-founded OpenAI and often criticized Microsoft's control over the AI firm, replied on X, "Now they will have to use Teams!". This was an apparent reference to reports that Altman was fired from OpenAi during a Google Meet, a competitor of Microsoft's Teams.

Microsoft owns 49 per cent stake in the San Francisco-based OpenAI, which is known for developing generative AI platforms like ChatGPT and DALL-E.

OpenAI board, led by Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever had announced on Friday that Altman was being pushed out of the company as the board “no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.”