Court evidence and testimonies in Musk's lawsuit against Altman reveal the complete role played by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati (now founder of AI startup Thinking Machines Lab) during the November 2023 coup: a key behind-the-scenes force driving the dismissal, and also the first to sign for Altman's return after the winds shifted.
The root of the conflict dates back a year before the coup. An internal document from September 2022 shows that Murati directly handed a complaint list to Altman. OpenAI's primary target at the time was $100 million in revenue. Altman's attitude was "must achieve by any means necessary," but Murati wrote, "Making what users want is not in OpenAI's DNA." A research-focused company being pressured to chase revenue put the executive team in a difficult position. She complained that Altman constantly shifted priorities, created panic, often urging "we're not fast enough" while also saying "I'm not sure about the situation either, maybe I'm mistaken," essentially pressuring the team based on incomplete understanding.
By 2023, Murati began providing screenshots, Slack records, and internal documents in bulk to co-founder Sutskever, also informing him that Altman had management issues during his time at Y Combinator. Sutskever compiled these into a 52-page memo for the board. In another piece of court testimony, Murati stated that Altman had also lied to her about AI safety review issues: Altman claimed the legal department deemed a certain model didn't need to go before the safety committee. Upon checking with Chief Legal Officer Jason Kwon, she found the story didn't match, so she submitted the model for review herself. Former board member Toner testified that the materials provided by Murati and Sutskever "greatly facilitated" the board's decision.
On November 16, the four board members unanimously signed the document to dismiss Altman. Murati was appointed interim CEO and volunteered to notify Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
The court released 78 text messages between Murati and Altman, spanning from Sunday evening to early Monday morning. Murati relayed the board's tough stance to Altman: they "don't care if everyone resigns," they just "don't want you touching AGI," and had already found "someone from Twitch" (former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear) as the new CEO. Yet, within the same batch of texts, Murati also told Altman, "I hope Nadella can help overturn this." As the board-appointed interim CEO, she was already secretly seeking external help for the person whose dismissal she had helped engineer.
The turning point came when Murati judged the board couldn't hold out. On Sunday, the board issued a statement "firmly supporting the dismissal decision." Murati texted Nadella: "I won't be signing this." Early Monday morning, she informed Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott: "The board is about to resign." Scott replied, "For real this time?" She answered, "Seems like it, Ilya signed our petition." Subsequently, 750 employees signed a petition demanding the board resign and Altman be reinstated; Murati's signature was the first on the list.
Toner's assessment in testimony was direct: Murati was "extremely uncooperative" and "incredibly negative" after Altman's dismissal, "completely unwilling to tell the team that her conversations with the board significantly contributed to the decision to fire Altman." She was the only one who could have defended that decision, but she refused to step forward. As a result, employees thought it was a sudden move by a few external board members and quickly sided with Altman. Toner's exact words: "She was waiting to see which way the wind was blowing, but she didn't realize she herself was the wind."
From secretly handing over materials to push for the dismissal, refusing to endorse it after the fallout while turning to pull in Microsoft, and finally leading the signing of the petition to demand Altman's return, Murati stood only on her own side throughout the entire coup.
