What Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott told CEO Satya Nadella in email on the OpenAI Board firing CEO Sam Altman in 2023 – The Times of India
Microsoft’s Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott had a blunt diagnosis for why OpenAI‘s board fired Sam Altman in November 2023: internal power struggles over GPUs and a chief scientist struggling with a colleague’s promotion. In an email sent to CEO Satya Nadella on November 19, 2023, Scott laid out the messy reality behind the shock dismissal. Board member Ilya Sutskever had grown increasingly frustrated with Altman over two specific issues that had been festering inside OpenAI.The first was a fight over computing resources. ChatGPT’s explosive success meant GPUs were being diverted to the API and consumer products. Research teams felt starved. They could “always use more GPUs because what they’re doing is literally insatiable,” Scott wrote. The researchers blamed Applied AI for hogging resources. Applied AI believed they deserved priority. Neither side saw the bigger picture.
The promotion that changed everything
The second conflict cut deeper. Jakub Pachocki, who had worked under Sutskever, started making major research breakthroughs. Altman promoted him to lead OpenAI’s core model development. The move was logical from a CEO perspective. For Sutskever, it stung. His former subordinate was now arguably more important than him.“Ilya has had a very, very hard time with this,” Scott explained. The shift happened fast, and Sutskever struggled watching someone he’d mentored leapfrog into a leadership role tackling problems “Ilya has been trying to solve the past few years with little or no progress.”
Board members ‘susceptible’ to one-sided story
Scott didn’t mince words about the board’s competence. He described some members as “effective altruism folks” who wanted unlimited money to build AGI “just to study and ponder, but not to do anything with.”None had enough business experience to understand that firing Altman wouldn’t solve their concerns. It would make them worse. They also bungled the execution. No one sought outside counsel on managing a CEO transition at “the hottest company in the world.”The timeline Scott provided showed the chaos. Thursday night: board alerts Mira Murati. Friday noon: Altman fired, Greg Brockman removed, blog post goes live. By late Friday: researchers flood Altman with messages pledging loyalty and threatening to quit. Pachocki was among the first to reach out.Within five days, nearly every OpenAI employee signed a letter demanding Altman’s return. Microsoft swooped in with job offers. The board caved. Altman later told Bill Gates the whole ordeal was “extremely painful” but ultimately strengthened the company. Scott’s email captured why it happened: inexperienced directors fell for an incomplete narrative about resource battles and bruised egos.