OpenAI former board member Helen Toner's videotaped deposition in the Musk v. Altman case was played to the jury this week. She directly fingered ex-CTO Mira Murati (now founder of AI startup Thinking Machines Lab) as the central force behind Altman's 2023 firing — who then quickly distanced herself from the fallout.
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Toner laid out the board's reasons for firing Altman: "a pattern of behavior involving honesty and candor, resistance to board oversight," as well as "complaints from two members of his core management team to the board about his management style and manipulation of board processes." Murati was one of the key complainants.
The former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever's testimony filled in more of the chain. Sutskever's 52-page memo to the board contained screenshots that "most, if not all" came from Murati: Slack records, texts, internal documents — she handed them over batch by batch, which Sutskever compiled and gave to independent directors D'Angelo, Toner, and McCauley. Murati didn't just supply internal OpenAI material. She also told Sutskever that Altman had left Y Combinator (Silicon Valley's most famous startup accelerator, where Altman was president) for the same reasons: "creating chaos, starting new projects everywhere, setting people against each other, so he couldn't manage YC." That cross-organization information was written into the memo to argue that Altman's behavior pattern wasn't a one-off.
On the day of the firing, the board discussed who would notify Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Toner testified that Murati volunteered, saying she had the closest relationship with Nadella and was best suited to deliver the news. The board agreed. Murati told Nadella that Altman had been removed, she would serve as interim CEO, and the company would launch a search for a permanent CEO.
But within days, the tide turned: employees collectively demanded Altman's return. The executive team warned the board at a meeting: "If Sam doesn't come back, the company is finished." Toner's response was something like, "That's consistent with OpenAI's mission" — Sutskever said she put it even more bluntly.
WIRED reporter Max Zeff, who covered the trial live, noted that Toner testified Murati, after the reversal, "had no intention of telling her team how much her conversations with the board had contributed to the firing decision" — she "wouldn't stick her neck out," worried about her own career prospects. Toner's exact words: "She was waiting to see which way the wind was blowing, but she didn't realize she was the wind."
Murati also testified this week. She said she stayed in close contact with Nadella; court exhibits showed texts in which she asked Nadella to call to coordinate "how to talk with sam here" and another saying, "Don't let researchers be poached by Demis or Elon." She called Nadella a "voice of reason" during the crisis.