Molo asked Nadella if he was aware that, for a period of time, OpenAI’s nonprofit did not have any employees.
“I am not,” Nadella said.
Molo also questioned Nadella about Microsoft’s role during Altman’s brief ouster. At the time, Nadella announced that he would hire Altman, along with OpenAI’s third co-founder and current president, Greg Brockman, as well as other allies, to head up a new AI team at Microsoft.
Nadella said that he “had ideas about how Sam [Altman] and the other employees could join Microsoft if they were not reinstated.”
“If people were going to leave OpenAI, I wanted them to come to Microsoft,” he said.
Molo asked Nadella if he knew why Altman had been removed, to which Nadella said he was never given an “explicit answer.”
“Did the thought occur to you … the board might issue a public statement about why they fired Altman?” Molo said.
Nadella said during that period — referred to as “The Blip” by many OpenAI employees — he was focused on ensuring continuity for customers.
“It goes back to me wanting to communicate to customers that they can count on us,” he said. “Come Monday, that doesn’t just disappear.”
Sutskever, who took the stand after Nadella, described Altman’s removal differently. He said it was a “Hail Mary” to save OpenAI, which had become an environment that was “not conducive” to the technology’s safety.
“I felt a great deal of ownership of OpenAI,” he said. “I felt like I created this company. I simply cared for it, and I didn’t want it to be destroyed.”
Sutskever, who helped lead the ouster, had compiled a more than 50-page record of Altman’s “consistent pattern of lying,” including misrepresenting facts, safety protocols and company information to the board and executives.
Sutskever maintained that he had worked on a team that aimed to focus on long-term risks as more powerful AI was built.
“The goal of the super alignment is to do the research in advance, such that humanity will have the technological means to make it controlled and safe,” he said.
The team was disbanded days after he departed the company, in May 2024.
