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The Story: One of tech’s biggest stories this year just happened over the weekend.

As you’ve probably heard by now, Sam Altman, the founder and CEO of OpenAI, was unexpectedly fired last Friday.

Let’s get you up to speed on what happened over the weekend, what changed yesterday, and what venture capitalists Bradley Tusk and Ansaf Kareem predict will now happen to the company that created ChatGPT.

Here’s the timeline:

On Friday, November 17th, OpenAI released a surprise statement that CEO Sam Altman had been fired. The company’s CTO Mira Murati, would take his place as interim CEO. The press release also noted the removal of Greg Brockman, the co-founder and former president of OpenAI, from the board as chairman. Brockman was asked to stay on to support the new CEO, however.

OpenAI’s statement read that Altman “was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.” Outside of this statement, we still know very little about the internal details of why Altman was removed.

Right after the Friday statement was released, Brockman and three senior researchers showed support for Altman by stepping down from their positions.

On Saturday, November 18th, OpenAI COO, Brad Lightcap, shared that, “We can say definitively that the board’s decision was not made in response to malfeasance or anything related to our financial, business, safety, or security/privacy practices.”

But investors did not seem to share the board’s view of the former CEO. According to reports, investors were immediately pushing the board to reinstate Altman once they found out about the firing.

The pressure appeared to have an effect, as only one day after the firing announcement, the board changed its mind and agreed, in principle, to bring Altman and Brockman back to the company, according to a report from The Verge.

Then on Sunday, November 19th, Altman received even more support from OpenAI employees. Bloomberg reported that COO Lightcap and interim CEO Murati were also pushing the board to reinstate Altman.

But the board apparently changed its mind and refused, instead deciding to appoint its third CEO in three days. Emmett Shear, former CEO of Twitch, was chosen to be the company’s new interim CEO, replacing Murati.

OpenAI employees strongly opposed the board’s decision to remove Altman. By Monday morning, almost the entire OpenAI staff had signed a letter indicating that they would be willing to quit and join Altman wherever he may land, according to New York Times sources who claim to have read the letter. As of last night, reports are that close to 650 of OpenAI’s 700 employees have signed the letter.

Also yesterday, Microsoft, who owns a 49% stake in OpenAI, quickly moved to hire Altman, Brockman, and other OpenAI employees who left. Microsoft announced Altman would be joining the company to lead a new AI research team.

The OpenAI board has now publicly admitted to regretting its decision to axe Sam Altman. Board member Ilya Sutskever, the co-founder and Chief Scientist of OpenAI, and one of the leading members of the push to oust Altman, tweeted yesterday, “I deeply regret my participation in the board's actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI.”

Expert Take: Ansaf Kareem, founding and managing partner of Latitude Capital, sees the weekend’s chaos at OpenAI as a warning sign for what poor governance can cause:

Kareem suggests that if VCs were on the OpenAI board, there may not have been any news out of OpenAI this past weekend. He says, “I think in a weird way that if there were VCs on the [OpenAI] board, the outcome may have likely not happened, mostly I think because of incentive alignments; an organization needs to have a board that is aligned with its core principles.”

Bradley Tusk, founder and CEO of Tusk Venture Partners, echoes Kareem: “It’s unusual because normally the investors would be on the board. And they would know about this and they would be part of the process, and they might let other investors know as well… my guess is we will never see a structure like this again.”

When asked if he’d seen other investors, especially ones invested in artificial intelligence/OpenAI, express worry about the situation, Tusk explained that he hadn’t mostly because the situation is so singular:

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