Behind the scenes of OpenAI’s Sam Altman’s Wild Ouster

Sam Altman was in Las Vegas for the biggest party of the weekend, the Formula 1 race, when he opened the Google Meet link that would spark a whiplash-inducing power struggle within the companies over the future of artificial intelligence.

Moments before clicking the link in his hotel room, the 38-year-old CEO was living a charmed life. Since his company, OpenAI, ushered in the AI ​​era a year ago with the release of ChatGPT, Altman has traveled the world meeting with presidents and prime ministers, shaping the global policy agenda in terms of AI. And it was on the cusp of a fundraising that would value OpenAI at nearly $90 billion, about triple what it had been earlier in the year.