Greg Brockman’s wife cried and asked Ilya Sutskever to change his mind: WSJ

• OpenAI’s Ilya Sutskever has experienced a dramatic turnaround regarding the ouster of his co-founder, Sam Altman.
• The turnaround came after an emotional call from co-founder Greg Brockman’s wife, the WSJ reported.
• Sutskever celebrated the couple’s wedding in 2019.

Ilya Sutskever, chief scientist and co-founder of OpenAI, expressed remorse on Monday for his role in ousting Sam Altman as the company’s CEO.

“I deeply regret my participation in the board’s actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI,” Sutskever wrote on. “I love everything we’ve built together and will do everything I can to bring the company together.”

His change of heart came after conversations with staff and with the wife of OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Anna Brockman — who married Greg Brockman in 2019 — cried and begged Sutskever to change his mind, according to the WSJ. It is unclear what exactly contributed to Sutskever’s overthrow.

Greg Brockman was previously president of OpenAI. He resigned in solidarity with Altman and wrote in a post on On Saturday, it was Sutskever who told Altman he was fired.

Sutskever has since added his name to an open letter signed by nearly every OpenAI employee, calling on the board to resign and bring back Altman.

Ilya Sutskever officiated Greg and Anna Brockman’s civil ceremony, which was held at the OpenAI offices and featured a robotic hand as the ring bearer, according to Greg Brockman’s Twitter posts at the time .

The relationship between the co-founders of OpenAI goes back a long way. Sutskever was a former researcher at Google Brain, before Elon Musk and Sam Altman poached him in 2015 to co-found OpenAI with them.

Talks to reinstate Altman at OpenAI broke down on Sunday. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced Monday that Altman and Brockman are joining Microsoft to lead a new AI research team.

Anna Brockman did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, sent through Greg Brockman and outside normal business hours.