Sutskever says he gathered evidence for year to oust Altman

Ilya Sutskever told the court he spent about a year gathering evidence that Sam Altman had shown a consistent pattern of dishonesty, turning OpenAI’s 2023 leadership shock into something closer to a long-running governance campaign than a sudden revolt. The former chief scientist said he had been thinking about moving against Altman for at least a year before the November 2023 board vote that briefly forced Altman out and then, under pressure, brought him back.

The testimony sharpened the most damaging allegation OpenAI’s board has ever made about its own chief executive. In its Nov. 17, 2023 statement, the board said Altman was removed after a “deliberative review process” and concluded he was “not consistently candid” in his communications with directors. The board said those candor problems hindered its ability to do its job. Sutskever said he prepared a document at the board’s request and described Altman’s behavior as undermining and pitting executives against one another. He also said he had discussed removing Altman with Mira Murati for a long time.

What looked like a clean board action quickly became a test of whether OpenAI’s employees would accept it. More than 500 workers reportedly signed a letter threatening to leave unless the board resigned and Altman was reinstated. The backlash was large enough to force a rapid reversal, and Altman was back within days. For a company built around artificial intelligence systems with growing economic and strategic importance, the episode exposed how quickly board authority can evaporate when the people building the product no longer trust the people overseeing it.

The stakes in the courtroom go well beyond old Silicon Valley factionalism. The testimony is part of Elon Musk’s lawsuit over OpenAI’s governance and corporate direction, including whether the company drifted from its original nonprofit-centered mission toward a more commercial structure. OpenAI was founded with a promise that artificial general intelligence would benefit all humanity. Today, the dispute is being litigated in the shadow of Microsoft’s role as a major backer, with Satya Nadella also drawn into trial testimony about the 2023 crisis and the company’s control structure.

Sutskever later expressed regret over his role in the board’s actions, but his testimony underscored how deeply the conflict ran. It was not just a clash over one CEO. It was evidence of a system in which directors, founders and investors lost confidence in one another at the very moment OpenAI was becoming central to the technology economy, leaving its governance model under sustained legal and regulatory scrutiny.