Sam Altman's Post-Ouster Texts Surface at Trial
During the Musk v. Altman civil trial in Oakland, jurors were shown a two-day text exchange between OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and then-interim CEO Mira Murati from November 19-20, 2023, the night of Altman's board-led ouster. According to Business Insider, which published the exhibit, Murati relayed the board's rejection in real time - "They're convinced about their decision... Yes for you to be gone" - while Altman, worried the board might hand OpenAI's technology to Anthropic, proposed the strategy that ultimately worked: get staff to sign a petition threatening to quit. Hours later, roughly 600 employees, about 95% of OpenAI's staff, signed that letter, and Altman was reinstated as CEO within days.
The newly surfaced texts matter less for what jurors already knew - that Altman was fired, then reinstated - than for revealing, in Altman's own real-time words, the actual mechanism of his comeback: he suggested the mass-resignation petition strategy himself, in the same exchange where he speculated the board might be trying to hand OpenAI's technology to Anthropic, adding a documented, contemporaneous account to what had previously been reconstructed only after the fact.
What happened
Business Insider obtained and published a trial exhibit shown to jurors in the Musk v. Altman civil trial in Oakland: a text exchange between Sam Altman and then-interim CEO Mira Murati spanning November 19-20, 2023, the night of Altman's board-led ouster and the hours that followed. Altman, locked out of OpenAI's offices, repeatedly asked to meet the board; Murati, on calls with board members in real time, relayed their answers: "Directionally very bad," "They're convinced about their decision," and, when Altman asked whether he was being fired outright, "Yes for you to be gone." Murati told him the board wanted "a new ceo in place" - Emmett Shear, whom she described in the texts as "rando twitch guy."
Technical context
Later in the exchange, Altman asks Murati "Is that what they want is the IP going to anthropic?" - a concern about the board's intentions not otherwise confirmed in the record - and separately asks "what if msft acquires openai?" as Microsoft, OpenAI's largest investor, pushed for updates. The exchange ends with Altman proposing the strategy that defined the following days: "I think you all just need to get a petition of everyone saying they will quit and join" Microsoft. Within hours, roughly 600 OpenAI employees, about 95% of staff, signed a letter threatening to resign unless Altman was reinstated and the board that fired him resigned; Altman returned as CEO shortly after.
Industry context
The exhibit was introduced amid broader Musk v. Altman testimony covering OpenAI's 2019 shift to a capped-profit structure. Reuters and MIT Technology Review report that Elon Musk's case centers on the claim that OpenAI abandoned its founding nonprofit mission, while CNBC reported that OpenAI president Greg Brockman rebutted Musk's account of the company's early history in his own testimony. Separately, Mira Murati testified that Altman was inconsistent with different executives and created what she called chaos; that testimony, over an unrelated 2026 safety-review dispute, is being tracked as its own story on this site.
What to watch
Continued witness testimony and additional exhibits as the trial proceeds before US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, and whether the case turns more on documentary evidence like these texts or on the broader legal question of OpenAI's corporate-structure obligations to early backers and its founding mission.
Key Points
- 1The texts show Altman proposing the staff-petition strategy that led roughly 600 employees to threaten resignation and secured his reinstatement within days.
- 2Altman's texts also show him speculating the board might transfer OpenAI's technology to Anthropic, a claim not otherwise confirmed in court records.
- 3The exhibit was introduced during broader Musk v. Altman testimony over OpenAI's 2019 shift to a capped-profit structure and its nonprofit mission.
Scoring Rationale
Verified against the primary Business Insider exhibit (fetched via syndication with confirmed canonical URL) plus five independent outlets covering the same trial, including Reuters, CNBC, BBC, and MIT Technology Review. The texts add a genuinely new, documented detail - Altman himself proposed the petition strategy that secured his reinstatement - to a well-known story, making this solidly notable courtroom evidence rather than a rehash.
Sources
Public references used for this report.
Practice interview problems based on real data
1,625 SQL & Python problems across 15 industry datasets — the exact type of data you work with.
Try 250 free problems
