What Comes Next for Sam Altman’s OpenAI

Sam Altman is back as OpenAI’s CEO. Now he faces the hard part: mending the fracture that led to his ouster less than five days before—and repairing an image that had lost its shine as the corporate drama spilled into the public view.

Among the most immediate challenges will be determining the role of Ilya Sutskever, the company’s visionary chief scientist, and his allies on the company’s AI safety team who initially supported Altman’s ouster. At the same time, Altman needs to act quickly to undo any damage to OpenAI’s standing with its customers and employees. OpenAI competitors such as Amazon, Anthropic, Cohere and Adept spent the past few days trying to pitch customers or recruit employees.