Former OpenAI CTO Murati's Subtle Selfishness: Handing the Knife and Being the First to Ask for Peace

The trial evidence and testimony of Musk v. Altman revealed the full role of OpenAI's former CTO, Mira Murati (now the founder of the AI startup Thinking Machines Lab), in the November 2023 coup: the driving force behind the dismissal behind the scenes, and the first person to sign to bring Altman back after the reversal of fortunes.

The root of the conflict predates the coup by a year. An internal document from September 2022 showed that Murati directly handed Altman a list of complaints. OpenAI's primary goal at the time was $1 billion in revenue, with Altman's stance being "whatever it takes to achieve it," but Murati wrote, "Building what users want is not in OpenAI's DNA." A gene research company was forced to pursue revenue, while the executive team was caught in the middle. She complained that Altman kept changing priorities, creating panic, often pushing for speed with "we are not fast enough," only to follow up with "I am not sure about the situation, I might have messed up," pressuring the team with an incomplete understanding.

By 2023, Murati began providing co-founder Sutskever with screenshots, Slack logs, and internal documents in bulk, also informing him that Altman had management issues during YC. Sutskever compiled this into a 52-page memo submitted to the board. In another part of her testimony in court, Murati claimed that Altman had lied to her about AI security review issues: Altman stated that the legal department had determined that a certain model did not need to go to the security committee; she checked with Chief Legal Officer Jason Kwon and found discrepancies, so she took it upon herself to submit the model for review. Former director Toner testified that the materials provided by Murati and Sutskever "significantly influenced" the board's decision.

On November 16, all four directors unanimously signed a document to dismiss Altman. Murati was appointed as interim CEO and voluntarily reached out to Microsoft CEO Nadella.

The court released 78 text messages between Murati and Altman, which continued from Sunday evening into Monday morning. While Murati relayed the board's strong stance to Altman – they "don't care about mass resignations," they just "don't want you touching AGI," and had found "someone from Twitch" (former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear) to be the new CEO – in the same set of messages, she also told Altman, "I hope Nadella can help overturn this." As the interim CEO appointed by the board, she was secretly seeking external support to overturn the dismissal she had driven.

The turning point came when the Murati faction believed the board was losing support. On Sunday, the board issued a statement "firmly supporting the dismissal decision," but Murati texted Nadella: "I won't sign off on this." In the early hours of Monday, she informed Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott: "The board is about to resign." Scott replied, "Is it for real this time?" She answered, "Seems like it, Ilya signed our petition." Subsequently, 750 employees jointly demanded the board's resignation and Altman's reinstatement, with Murati's signature at the top of the petition.

Toner's assessment in her testimony was straightforward: Murati was "extremely uncooperative" and "extremely negative" after Altman's dismissal, and "completely unwilling to inform the team that her conversations with the board largely drove the decision to dismiss Altman." She was the only one who could have supported this decision, but she refused to step up, leading employees to believe it was a sudden attack by a few outside directors and quickly rallying behind Altman. In Toner's words, "She was waiting to see which way the wind was blowing, but she didn't realize she was the wind."

Behind the scenes, submitting materials to push for dismissal, refusing to endorse the turnaround to side with Microsoft post-crisis, and ultimately leading the charge to sign a letter demanding Altman's return, Murati consistently stood on her own side throughout the entire coup.