OpenAI announced Sam Altman’s removal as CEO on Friday, November 17, 2023, in a post titled “OpenAI announces leadership transition.” On November 22, 2023, OpenAI announced it had “reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board.” The entire arc - fired and reinstated - took less than a week.
Note on sourcing: OpenAI’s pages return HTTP 403 to automated fetchers; both posts were corroborated through search against their canonical openai.com URLs.