What Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott told CEO Satya Nadella in email on the OpenAI Board firing CEO Sam Altman in 2023
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.
