What happened
OpenAI co-founder and President Greg Brockman recounted the 72 hours in November 2023 that nearly dissolved the company following Sam Altman's firing. Brockman described receiving the board call, his immediate resignation, and the subsequent formation of a contingency "Phoenix" company at Altman's home. The crisis culminated with Ilya Sutskever's public statement, which recalibrated events and led to an organisational reset. Brockman also detailed the original Napa offsite that established OpenAI's decade-long technical plan and the strategic shift from a pure non-profit to a hybrid model.
Why it matters
Extreme governance fragility and operational risks are inherent in frontier AI development. For founders and investors, the event underscores how quickly leadership instability can threaten a company's existence, even for a market leader. Procurement teams and security architects should recognise that the rapid formation of a "Phoenix" entity demonstrates the critical need for robust business continuity planning and vendor resilience assessments, especially with providers of core AI infrastructure.
