Court filings in the Musk v. Altman case have revealed a trove of text messages exchanged on November 19, 2023, between Sam Altman and then-CTO Mira Murati. Two days earlier, OpenAI's board had abruptly fired Altman as CEO, citing only a lack of candor — no further explanation. When these texts were sent, Murati was inside the boardroom; Altman was outside, relying on her to relay messages while coordinating with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
Altman asked how things were going. "The direction is extremely bad," Murati replied. He offered to simply walk away, but the board wouldn't take the call, wouldn't let him into the meeting, and wouldn't even wait a bit longer. Murati relayed the board’s list of "all reasons and issues" and said they planned to name a new CEO that very night — former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear, whom Murati referred to in the text as "some guy from Twitch."
Altman asked if the team should send a joint letter pressuring the board. Murati said it wouldn't work — "they don't care if all employees resign." Altman speculated the board wanted to hand the technology to Anthropic (the competitor founded by former OpenAI VP Dario Amodei). "No," Murati replied. "They just don't want you near AGI." The fight wasn't over safety protocols — it was over who would control artificial general intelligence.
With every option rejected, Altman threw out a wild idea: have Microsoft acquire OpenAI. Would that satisfy the board's governance concerns? Murati looped Nadella into a board call to gauge progress. Her update? "Satya is playing Tai Chi" — a Chinese idiom meaning he's avoiding a direct answer.
The same court filing also included a separate group chat between Altman, former Salesforce CEO Bret Taylor (who later became OpenAI's new board chair), and Nadella. Altman's short-term plan: have Murati, as interim CEO, rehire both him and co-founder Greg Brockman, while seeking a legal injunction against the board. Nadella replied, "Sounds good." Taylor's bottom line: Altman returns as CEO and board member with a six-month transition board. But by 3:20 AM, Altman reported that Murati was still on the phone with the board — and things weren't going well.
In the end, none of these backroom maneuvers worked. What did? Over 700 OpenAI employees signed a letter threatening to resign and follow Altman to Microsoft — including Ilya Sutskever, the chief scientist who had orchestrated the coup. Five days later, Altman was reinstated. The board was overhauled: Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley were out; only Adam D'Angelo remained.