Story by Berber Jin – wsj.com — SAN FRANCISCO—Two days after Sam Altman was ousted from OpenAI, he was back at the company’s office, trying to negotiate his return. The former chief executive officer entered with a guest badge on Sunday and posted on X: “first and last time i ever wear one of these.” The leadership of the company that created the hit AI chatbot ChatGPT remained unclear Sunday, as investors and many employees pushed over the weekend to restore Altman. He has been engineering a countercoup to retake control of one of Silicon Valley’s most valuable and high-profile startups. Altman’s camp has succeeded in bringing the board that fired him to the negotiating table and proposed a series of high-profile tech executives to potentially helm a new board that would be more aligned to his business vision. Names floated include Bret Taylor, the former co-chief executive of Salesforce; Brian Chesky, the chief executive of Airbnb who has been a longtime confidant of Altman’s; and Laurene Powell Jobs, founder and president of Emerson Collective, people familiar with the matter said.

Sheryl Sandberg, the former chief operating officer of Meta Platforms, also came up. Bloomberg previously reported that Taylor is being considered. Microsoft’s executives have also pushed for oversight in a new corporate structure, including a potential board observer seat that would give it more visibility into the company’s governance. Any greater role on the board could be a regulatory concern; Microsoft has kept its ownership stake in OpenAI below the 50% mark to avoid raising the attention of regulators. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sacked by company over lack of ‘candid communications’ Among all the investors, Microsoft might be the most deeply intertwined in the fate of OpenAI, and the startup’s turmoil has been a liability. Beyond being OpenAI’s largest backer, Microsoft has reoriented its business around the startup’s AI software. Shares in Microsoft fell after the news of Altman’s firing. The abrupt shake-up at OpenAI turns on one of the oldest tales in Silicon Valley: a breakup between a founder and his board. But in this case it was a very particular kind of founder—the face of Silicon Valley’s artificial-intelligence revolution—and a very particular kind of board, which was tasked with making social good a priority over profit. The rupture threatens the future of the company and the billions of dollars investors had put into it.

Over the weekend, Altman made clear to his allies that if he does return, he wants a new board and governance structure, people familiar with the matter said. If he doesn’t return, Altman is considering starting his own venture, potentially with talent from OpenAI. Two days after the board fired Altman, different explanations persisted for the initial firing. The board said Friday that it pushed out the CEO after it concluded he hadn’t been candid with the company’s directors. It didn’t elaborate. People close to Altman said the ouster had more to do with disputes around the safety of the company’s artificial-intelligence efforts and a power struggle with one co-founder and board member, Ilya Sutskever. On Sunday, a person familiar with the board stood by the board’s statement citing Altman’s lack of candor. This person said there was no single precipitating incident but rather a mounting loss of trust over communications with Altman that led it to remove him as CEO. The person declined to offer examples.

The ouster from OpenAI wasn’t the first time Altman was asked to leave a company. Several years ago, senior leaders at the venture firm Y Combinator asked Altman to step down as president after mounting concerns about the time he was spending on his other business endeavors, including at OpenAI, according to investors briefed by the venture firm’s executives—information not previously reported. In addition to OpenAI, Altman recently hatched plans for two new business endeavors. He enlisted Apple’s former chief design officer, Jony Ive, to create a consumer hardware device. And he recently spent weeks in the Middle East gauging investor interest for a new startup aiming to create low-cost chips needed to train OpenAI’s artificial-intelligence models, people familiar with the matter said. It is unclear whether those efforts, or the communication around it, played into Altman’s dismissal. Bloomberg earlier reported on the new chips venture. The Information and the Financial Times earlier reported the new Ive venture.

With his firing from OpenAI, Altman quickly got the upper hand in terms of public messaging. The board didn’t use a communications or law firm in its dealings, people familiar with the board said, expecting that the OpenAI team would help them. But Altman had loyalty from investors and employees. The board ended up isolated as social media became filled with shock and support for Altman. His largest backers, including Microsoft and Thrive Capital, immediately on Friday began pressing for Altman’s position to be restored. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella began working with Altman that evening on his next steps, people familiar with Altman said. Despite his business success, Altman had been losing the support of a board whose constituents changed as the company’s commercial efforts powered ahead. It was a board structure that he had ironically helped create and publicly promoted as he encountered questions about AI safety. Before Friday’s dust-up, the board consisted of six people, including Altman. Then, it abruptly removed Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president and a close friend of Altman’s, and voted to oust Altman. None of the four board members remaining were affiliated with the company’s big investors. It isn’t clear whether the vote was unanimous.

The board that took the action was down from the nine seats it had earlier in the year and lacked at least one key prior Altman backer. Earlier this year, Reid Hoffman, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist with a long history of supporting Altman, stepped down after starting a rival company to OpenAI. Separately, Shivon Zilis, a tech executive at Elon Musk’s brain-implant startup Neuralink, and Will Hurd, who started a presidential campaign, also left this year. The board had been working to fill those empty seats for months, though the process stalled, according to a person familiar with the matter. The other four directors are: Adam D’Angelo, a former Facebook executive and the founder of the question-and-answer website Quora; Tasha McCauley, an adjunct senior management scientist at Rand; Helen Toner, a director at a Washington nonprofit; and OpenAI’s chief scientist, Sutskever.

Altman this weekend was furious with himself for not having ensured the board stayed loyal to him and regretted not spending more time managing its various factions, people familiar with his thinking said. —Meghan Bobrowsky, Preetika Rana and Dana Mattioli contributed to this article.

Write to Berber Jin at berber.jin@wsj.com, Deepa Seetharaman at deepa.seetharaman@wsj.com, Tom Dotan at tom.dotan@wsj.com and Keach Hagey at Keach.Hagey@wsj.com