Altman vs Sutskever II: Do We Now Know What Ilya Saw?
Two years after OpenAI’s board briefly fired Sam Altman, the backroom battles that sparked the coup are finally coming into focus.
A newly released legal deposition from cofounder Ilya Sutskever sheds light on what drove him to turn against his longtime ally and help oust the CEO in November 2023.
Over nearly ten hours of questioning tied to Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI, Sutskever described a pattern of manipulation, half-truths and internal conflict that he said had eroded trust in Altman’s leadership.
According to Sutskever, Altman routinely played senior executives off against one another and gave conflicting messages about company strategy.
At the request of independent board members, he compiled a 52-page dossier of screenshots and internal messages detailing incidents in which Altman allegedly undermined colleagues, concealed information and created what Sutskever called “a culture of chaos.”
He claimed he had planned to raise the issue for nearly a year before the board’s shock decision to remove Altman.
The document also included claims from then-chief technology officer Mira Murati, who reportedly accused Altman of fostering rivalries and of leaving Y Combinator amid similar behaviour. Sutskever said he feared that, had Altman learned of the memo, he would “make it disappear.”
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OpenAI has dismissed the latest revelations, saying the matter was thoroughly investigated and that Altman and president Greg Brockman remain the right leaders.
Still, Sutskever’s account offers the clearest view yet of how the world’s leading AI company nearly imploded from within.
