The court hearing revealed that Sam Altman hoped Microsoft would directly acquire OpenAI to keep his CEO position.

According to Beating Monitoring, the court hearing of Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Altman revealed text message records between Altman and then-CTO Murati on November 19, 2023.
Two days ago, OpenAI’s board suddenly removed Altman from his CEO position, only saying he was “not sufficiently transparent in communication,” without further explanation.
At the time these messages were sent, Murati was on a call with the board, with Altman kept outside, relying on her to relay messages, while coordinating with Microsoft CEO Nadella.

Altman first asked how things were going, and Murati said “the direction is extremely poor.”
He proposed that he could “simply walk away,” but the board did not respond.
He then asked if he could meet with the board in person, but was also refused, not even allowed to wait a little longer.
Murati said the board had already listed all of Altman’s “reasons and issues” to her and demanded a new CEO that very night.
The candidate was former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear, and Murati’s message directly called him “someone from Twitch.”

Altman asked whether the team should issue a joint letter to pressure the board, but Murati said it would be useless, “they don’t care if everyone resigns.”
Altman questioned whether the board wanted to transfer intellectual property to Anthropic (a competing company founded by former OpenAI VP of Research Dario Amodei after leaving), and Murati said no, “just don’t let you touch AGI.”
The dispute was not about safety procedures but about who would control artificial general intelligence.

At this point, Altman temporarily floated an idea: have Microsoft acquire OpenAI, asking if this could meet the board’s governance requirements.
Murati brought Nadella into a conference call with the board to ask about the progress, and she replied, “Satya (Nadella) is doing Tai Chi.”

On the same day, the court also released another set of messages: a group chat between Altman, former Salesforce CEO Bret Taylor (who later became the new chairman of OpenAI’s board), and Nadella.
Altman proposed that Murati temporarily serve as CEO to rehire him and co-founder Brockman, while applying for a court injunction against the board.
Nadella responded, “Sounds good.”
But by 3:20 a.m., Altman said Murati was still on a call with the board, and progress was slow.

In the end, these negotiations were not the most effective.
Over 700 OpenAI employees signed a joint letter threatening to resign and join Altman at Microsoft, including Sutskever, the chief scientist who initiated the coup.
Five days later, Altman was reinstated, the board was drastically reshuffled, with Toner and McCauley leaving, and only D’Angelo remaining.